Preamble

The House met at half-past Two o'clock

PRAYERS

[MR. SPEAKER in the Chair]

PRIVATE BUSINESS

AVON LIGHT RAIL TRANSIT BILL [LORDS]

HYTHE MARINA VILLAGE (SOUTHAMPTON) WAVESCREEN BILL

Orders for Third Reading read.

Queen's Consent, on behalf of the Crown, signified.

Read the Third time, and passed with amendments.

Oral Answers to Questions — EDUCATION AND SCIENCE

University Academics (Earnings)

Mr. Dalyell: To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Science what estimate he has made of the optimum rate of earnings of university academics from sources outside universities.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education and Science (Mr. Robert Jackson): The Department does not collect information about the levels of non-pay earnings among academics.

Mr. Dalyell: Would 20 per cent. of earnings and 20 per cent. of time be a reasonable guess?

Mr. Jackson: The answer probably varies very widely between different institutions and different individuals. We know from anecdotal evidence that in some cases earnings are substantial and in others not. The basic point is that if a pay claim is based on comparisons, like must be compared with like.

Mr. John Marshall: Does my hon. Friend agree that there are retention and recruitment problems in certain subjects at certain universities? Does he agree that those difficulties are an argument for more flexibility in the academic pay structure, and that a shortage of engineers and scientists is no argument for paying exceptionally higher salaries to lecturers in Latin?

Mr. Jackson: My hon. Friend is absolutely right. There is no point in people in universities, particularly the ablest, lecturing the Government about the brain drain if they are not prepared to take steps that are within their power to secure their continued employment in this country.

Higher Education (Capital Investment)

Mr. Macdonald: To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Science if he will make a statement on capital investment in higher education.

Mr. Jackson: Tile Supply Estimates provide for allocations totalling £272 million in 1989–90 for capital purposes in higher education. This provision reflects the Government's commitment to a high-quality, cost-effective higher education system.

Mr. Macdonald: Can the Minister confirm that according to the Government's own figures capital expenditure on universities in 1988 was 16 per cent. less than in 1979, and that capital spending on polytechnics was 14 per cent. less? Is that not a deplorable record? What possible excuse has the Minister for such a decline in capital spending on something of such importance to the nation's economic future?

Mr. Jackson: I must point out that, of the £272 million that we have allocated for capital purposes, £84 million is for polytechnics. We estimate that sum to he roughly


double what would otherwise have been provided by the local education authorities. As for overall spending, I have said before and will say again that we in Britain spend a higher proportion of our gross national product on higher education than any other western European country except the Netherlands.

Mr. Bill Walker: When contemplating capital expenditure, does my hon. Friend take into consideration what we already have? Is so, will he bear in mind that the dental college at Dundee has superb accommodation, and that there is no need to spend vast sums on accommodational equipment there?

Mr. Jackson: I had the great pleasure of visiting Dundee and its dental school with my hon. Friend, and I was very impressed by what I found. That was reflected in subsequent decisions.

Mr. Simon Hughes: Why has the Department so far failed to respond to the request and recommendation by the Select Committee on Science and Technology in the other place that £25 million extra capital spend be provided this year for medical research equipment throughout our higher education sector?

Mr. Jackson: As the hon. Gentleman knows, public expenditure requirements for higher education are reviewed every year in the public expenditure survey, and that is the appropriate occasion on which to consider the suggestion to which the hon. Gentleman refers.

Mr. Thurnham: Does my hon. Friend agree with Dr. Terence Kealey that the universities could do much more to attract capital from outside sources, and that the universities are far too wedded to collective bargaining, jobs for life and dependence on the state?

Mr. Jackson: I agree with some of what my hon. Friend has said. Capital expenditure and investment in new plant, equipment and buildings is a prime area for which to raise funds from outside sources, which are often more prepared to give money for those purposes than others.

Higher Education (Age Participation Rate)

Mr. Bowis: To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Science what is the current age participation rate for higher education; and if he will make a statement.

The Secretary of State for Education and Science (Mr. Kenneth Baker): The provisional age participation index for 18-year-olds for 1988–89 stands at a record 15·1 per cent. The trend since 1979 has been strongly upward. We expect this autumn to see more than 1 million students in higher education for the first time in this country.

Mr. Bowis: Does my right hon. Friend agree that those figures show a towering record of achievement in the past decade, and of providing opportunities for the young people of this country? Does he further agree that such opportunity will be even more enhanced, come the greater emphasis on fees in the funding of higher education?

Mr. Baker: In this celebratory week, I entirely agree with my hon. Friend. Over the past 10 years there has been an increase of over 200,000 students in higher education, one of the biggest increases in our history. I agree with my hon. Friend that the announcement that I made last week

on increasing the public element of fees will stimulate universities, colleges and polytechnics to enrol more students. I am glad to see that that announcement has been so widely welcomed throughout higher education.

Mr. Campbell-Savours: Is the Secretary of State aware that there is a strong feeling in west Cumberland that the further education college should be able to provide a three-year degree course, if only linked to Preston, whereas at present it can provide only the first year, with students having to travel to Preston for the subsequent years? Will the Secretary of State take a personal interest in the matter and see whether the rules can be changed so that this right is available in west Cumberland.

Mr. Baker: I will look into what the hon. Gentleman has said. Only 10 days ago I was in his part of the world and visited the further education college in Barrow-in-Furness, which is being expanded and rebuilt at a cost of between £4 million and £5 million. I was impressed with the provision of that college.

Mr. Campbell-Savours: That is not the same.

Mr. Baker: I accept that it is not the same, but it is quite close. I will have a look at what the hon. Gentleman has said.

Mr. Anthony Coombs: Does my right hon. Friend agree that, of the large rise in student numbers in higher education over the last 10 years, the increase in those attending polytechnics, of about 30 per cent. to 300,000, is the most impressive? Does he further agree that, given the fact that polytechnics are particularly well placed to offer flexible entry and modular courses, particularly for older people who seek retraining, they will be in the forefront of higher education over the next 10 years?

Mr. Baker: I am sure that polytechnics will follow their success of the last 10 years, because most of the expansion has been in the polytechnic area. This has been achieved because the polytechnics have been flexible. They will grow even faster now that they are not under the control of education authorities. As my hon. Friend has indicated, by being resourceful, entrepreneurial and devising new courses related specifically to the needs of students, they have achieved this growth. I am sure that they will represent one of the major elements of expansion in the next 10 years.

Mr. Andrew Smith: Perhaps I may be permitted to interrupt the orgy of unjustified self-congratulation taking place amongst the Conservatives. Will the Secretary of State confirm that, as per the answer to me of 10 February from the Parliamentary Under-Secretary, the percentage of 18 to 24-year-olds in higher education has gone down, not up, under this Government? Will he further confirm that the public expenditure White Paper projects a fall in the real value of expenditure on higher education between now and 1992? In view of the claims that he is making about fees and increased numbers and the comments last week about what a great victory this represented over the Treasury, will he tell the House by how much the budget for higher education will be increased above the White Paper figures, or is this yet another example of how far the reality of the Government's resourcing of education falls short of its rhetoric?

Mr. Baker: The participation rate for 18-year-olds has increased from 12·4 per cent. to 15·1 per cent. over the last 10 years. What was being said a few moments ago was not at all an orgy of self-congratulation. It was a simple and modest statement of the continuing success of this Government over the last 10 years, projecting even greater success over the next 10 years.

Mr Marlow: Could my right hon. Friend look at the mental age as well as the physical age for acceptability to higher education, so that in future we can prevent such futile and disgraceful gestures, as the award of office by a students union to a convicted murderer?

Mr. Baker: I have already said—and I say again—that the decision by a very small minority of students at the London School of Economics is both despicable and shameful. It is deeply offensive to the family of PC Blakelock. It has been condemned by the London School of Economics, and by the hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr. Straw) and by many people across the country. I very much hope that that decision will be changed. The reputation of the London School of Economics should not depend on a small minority of the loony Left.

Science Budget (Additions)

Mr. Hood: To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Science what addition has been made to the science budget to meet the cost of salary increases of technicians employed by research councils, following the recent award to technicians employed by universities.

Mr. Jackson: The technicians' union has not yet agreed the pay offer made to it last month by the employers on the universities committee for non-teaching staffs in universities. I understand, however, that the negotiating parties are meeting again today.

Mr. Hood: By how much has the cost of research councils risen since the Secretary of State's announcement of this year's science budget?

Mr Jackson: I do not have that information immediately to hand, but I remind the House that in last year's public expenditure survey there was a substantial increase in the research council's vote of about 10 per cent. in real terms. That ought to be enough to cope with the current rises, including the rise in technicians' salaries. However, we shall have to examine in later years the consequences of this year's public expenditure survey.

Dr. Bray: It was clear, however, that a substantial proportion of the 10 per cent. increase would not be directed to both the new and the expanded research programmes, about which the Secretary of State and the Prime Minister made such a song and dance, particularly in relation to the global environment. A substantial part of that increase has had to be earmarked for salary increases for technicians and scientists. Have the Government been successful in obtaining an increase in the science budget comparable with that which they have obtained for the universities?

Mr. Jackson: The hon. Gentleman is always trying to look a gift horse in the mouth. There was a very substantial improvement in the amount of money made available last year. The hon. Gentleman speaks as though salaries and

staff are not part of the cost of the science vote, but they are a major part of the cost of that vote. That cost is reflected in the increase.

Secondary School Expenditure (Staffordshire)

Mr. Knox: To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Science how much was spent per pupil in secondary schools in Staffordshire in the most recent year for which figures are available; and what was the comparable figure for 1978–79, at constant prices.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education and Science (Mr. John Butcher): In actual cash, Staffordshire spent £535 per secondary pupil in 1978–79 and £1,420 per secondary pupil in 1987–88. At 1987–88 prices, those figures are £1,100 and £1,420 respectively.

Mr. Knox: Does my hon. Friend agree that the figures show a satisfactory increase in expenditure per secondary school pupil in Staffordshire since the Government came to power, despite the Opposition's remarks? Does he think that that increase has been accompanied by an improvement in standards?

Mr. Butcher: A considerable amount of information and research shows that there is not a direct and quantifiable correlation between the level of spend and the level of academic results achieved. That is an issue that we may address in a later question. The real growth in Staffordshire has been made possible because the Government have been very generous. The Staffordshire figures, and those that have been repeated in local education authorities across the country, show that it is a misnomer to use the word "cuts" when one refers to expenditure on education.

Mr. Fisher: Does the Minister accept that the figures have been achieved despite the Government's support, which led to a cut in the rate support grant? The figures are a tribute to Labour control in Staffordshire. Will the Minister confirm that, during the last five years of Labour control in Staffordshire, the examination results of secondary school pupils have risen, whereas the national figures have remained fairly static? Staffordshire's figures have advanced considerably, thanks to the Labour council's excellent control.

Mr. Butcher: As I said earlier, the academic results of local education authorities vary considerably. I know that the Opposition do not like league tables, but there are some fairly clear figures that show that the high-spending education authorities often achieve the least favourable academic results, while those that spend the least per head often achieve very favourable results. I shall not comment on Staffordshire's exact performance, but it is the Government's generosity that has made the general improvement possible.

Primary Secondary Schools (Accommodation)

Mr. Simon Hughes: To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Science what plans he has to improve the quality of accommodation provided in primary secondary schools.

Mr. Butcher: Local education authorities and governors are responsible for school buildings for which my right hon. Friend makes capital allocations and grant


available. For 1989–90 my right hon. Friend has announced capital allocations to LEAs of £352 million. LEAs will also have substantial spending power from capital receipts which they are able to use on improving the quality of school and college buildings.

Mr. Hughes: Given that last year 25 schools in England and Wales had fire damage costing over £250,000 each, and that the fire officer in Tory-controlled Norfolk has just advised his county council that there are 11 schools with no adequate means of escape and which are a high fire risk and 56 other Norfolk schools which do not comply with the codes of practice, is it not about time that schools were brought within the remit of the Fire Precautions Act 1971 so that the fire service inspects them and sees what a lamentable state many of them are in? Is it not time that, earlier rather than later, we brought our schools up to a decent standard to protect children from the risk of death or injury and that we had the capital investment from the Government to do the job?

Mr. Butcher: Of course, this is a question which the whole House takes very seriously but compared with other types of buildings, the fire safety record of schools is excellent. Of course, we should never be complacent and local education authorities have to set their own priorities on repairs and maintenance budgets. In terms of the cost of arson, which normally takes place outside school hours, we have a serious problem, and it is for that reason that I appointed a group of experts to look into the whole question of the cost of arson and vandalism, which has been variously estimated as being between £49 million and £100 million a year. That is intolerable, but of course, the safety question is very much to the fore and I shall look carefully at what the hon. Gentleman has just said.

Mr. Pawsey: Will my right hon. Friend confirm that for a relatively small outlay, for example on fire alarms and the like, schools could be made much safer places? Will he further confirm that he continues to chair a working group inquiring into arson and vandalism and give the House some idea of how that group is progressing and when it might be reporting to the Department and the House?

Mr. Butcher: I shall be glad to so report to the House in due course. I have now chaired this special group twice. We have an action plan of 10 points. We are targeting savings in a number of areas and, for the sake of comparatively small expenditures, I believe that we can make major savings in the £49 million to£100 million that I mentioned earlier, which of course can be used to much better effect in resourcing schools in basic things like books and other forms of support for teachers.

Mr. Corbett: Has the Minister forgotten that the Government's own figures show a £3 billion backlog in repairs and maintenance of our schools? Will he confirm that one million children are still being educated in very inadequate conditions? What will he do about that?

Mr. Butcher: The figures that the hon. Gentleman has just used should be examined very carefully. He knows that it is the practice of most local education authorities to submit a bid to my Department. In the main an average of approximately 34 per cent. of that bid goes to LEAs as a cash allocation. I appreciate that repairs and maintenance, for example, is a heading that we could look at. I cannot anticipate at this stage the outcome of the public

expenditure survey but I am aware that there are improvements to be made in quite a large number of schools. In the first instance it must be for LEAs to set their priorities when they put their bids to us.

Mr. McLoughlin: Is my hon. Friend happy with the way in which local education authorities allocate this capital expenditure? In Derbyshire there has been an increase in the capital available to the county council over the past two years, from about £5 million to £11 million. Is he aware that there is great concern, particularly in my constituency, that schools are not being treated fairly, perhaps because of their political complexion? I have to say to my hon. Friend and to the Secretary of State that there is growing concern about the way in which local authorities are, as we believe, abusing their position. Is my hon. Friend further aware that All Saints primary school in Matlock has been waiting now since 1983–84 for the continuation of very important work to bring it on to one site? Does he agree that it is not acceptable that there should be huge increases in the capital given to county councils and for them then to use it in wholly political exercises in various constituencies in the county?

Mr. Butcher: Derbyshire county council seems to devote the bulk of its efforts to blaming the Government for everything. The school that my hon. Friend mentioned had the first phase of its development approved under the Conservative Administration but is still waiting for the second phase. Derbyshire has rarely been out of the top five for capital allocations to the shire counties. It receives 52 per cent. of its claims for expenditure compared with a national average of 34 per cent. In my view, Derbyshire should stop playing politics and get on with the job.

Mr. Fatchett: Have not capital allocations for school maintenance decreased by nearly 30 per cent. in the past 10 years? Is that not because we have a £3 billion backlog in repairs to our schools and 1 million children are condemned every day to take their lessons in substandard accommodation? That accommodation would not be acceptable in private sector schools to which Cabinet members send their children. Why can we not have the same standards in the public sector and the money to carry out repairs so that our children can have decent schools and decent opportunities?

Mr. Butcher: It is regrettable that the hon. Gentleman makes comparisons with the private sector, because the private sector often operates under conditions which can be described as spartan. However, the hon. Gentleman raises a serious matter. He does not take into account the fact that capital receipts have boosted expenditure considerably. Capital receipts boosted the £352 million that I mentioned earlier to about £670 million. Of course we should like to provide more for repairs and maintenance, but the House must await the outcome of the public expenditure survey as far as future plans are concerned.

Teacher Training

Mr. Harry Greenway: To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Science what allowance is made for the in-service training of teachers in (a) school-time and (b) school holidays for heads, deputies and all other teachers; and if he will make a statement.

The Minister of State, Department of Education and Science (Mrs. Angela Rumbold): Participation in in-service training is part of the professional duties of a teacher under the pay and conditions document. The amount of time devoted to in-service training in school hours and outside school hours varies according to need and circumstances. In the Government's view the five non-contact days should be used mainly for in-service training.

Mr. Greenway: Can my hon. Friend confirm that there will continue to be an expansion of in-service training for heads, deputies and all teachers? Can she also confirm that such training is much more expensive if it is undertaken in school time because replacements have to be arranged for the absent teacher, head or deputy? Could not incentives be provided for such teachers to undertake more in-service training in school holidays which, after all, are not short?

Mrs. Rumbold: My hon. Friend will be interested to know that some £50 million has been set aside this year in training grants for teachers undertaking in-service training, and an additional £50 million in education support grants to help in training to prepare for the national curriculum. My hon. Friend asked about in-service training during school holidays or outside school hours. Many good local education authorities already arrange much of their in-service training outside school hours and many very professional teachers prefer to do it then.

Mr. Flannery: Is the Minister aware—I am sure that he is—that about a fortnight ago the Secretary of State answered a question in the Select Committee, and that the hon. Member for Ealing, North (Mr. Greenway) is pursuing the same subject? The Secretary of State referred to the fact that the number of supply teachers is totally insufficient. Large numbers of teachers who wish to take part in in-service training cannot because there are not enough supply teachers to replace them.
Is the Minister aware that the Secretary of State made it plain in the Select Committee that he intends to cut the number of supply teachers—another severe cut—so that teachers, who, since he came to office, have had more work after school than ever before will have to go out at night and weekends for in-service training, instead of continuing with the present arrangements for which they need more supply teachers?

Mrs. Rumbold: The hon. Gentleman should know that many local education authorities are working hard to sustain and increase the number of supply teachers. They have some good schemes, and well-organised local education authorities have a considerable number of supply teachers to cover for other teachers who are doing in-service training. I am sure that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State would have reaffirmed what I have just said to my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, North (Mr. Greenway), in reply to his question about in-service training out of school hours, insofar as it is important that professional teachers should, as much as possible, increase their professionalism by undertaking training both in and out of school time.

Mr. Favell: Is my hon. Friend satisfied with the present system for the appraisal of teachers? Three or four years ago, we heard a great deal about it. The medical profession

has now accepted the need for the medical audit, which is appraisal by one's colleagues. Would it not be sensible to consider a similar scheme for teachers?

Mrs. Rumbold: My hon. Friend will know that there are provisions in the Education (No. 2) Act 1986 for the introduction of appraisal schemes. Six pilot schemes were undertaken in local authorities and those are currently being assessed by the Department of Education and Science, with the intention of introducing appraisal schemes in other schools in the not too distant future.

Ms. Armstrong: Does the Minister accept the view of Her Majesty's inspectorate that primary education is critically short of teachers with expertise in science, technology and mathematics? As primary schools will embark on teaching the national curriculum core subjects next term, what is the Minister doing to ensure that every primary school teacher has the in-service training necessary to embark on the project?

Mrs. Rumbold: As the hon. Lady will know, we are embarking on a substantial in-service training scheme for primary school teachers, as well as secondary school teachers. With the introduction in September this year of the core subjects of the national curriculum, primary teachers will need to undertake some in-service training in science and mathematics in particular, although many primary school teachers, having seen the syllabuses and the curricula for mathematics and science, are happy with them and believe that they are well prepared already to undertake most of the work.

Teacher Shortages (Barnet)

Mr. Skinner: To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Science what plans he has to solve the problems of teacher shortages in Barnet.

Mrs. Rumbold: The Department's action programme on teacher shortages is aimed, in particular, at tackling the problem of teacher recruitment in London and the south-east.

Mr. Skinner: Is the Minister aware that one reason why there are shortages of teachers in the Prime Minister's constituency, parts of Derbyshire and elsewhere is the ever-changing job description that the Government are organising on behalf of teachers in relation to the national curriculum and the GCSE examination, but that almost certainly the main reason is pay? It is high time that the Government were prepared to pay teachers the same 26 per cent. increase that the top company directors received last year.

Mrs. Rumbold: I am surprised that the hon. Gentleman should attack both the GCSE and the national curriculum, as I understand that his Front Bench has adopted both of those as part of its own programme. My right hon. Friend has received the report from the interim advisory committee on teachers' pay and conditions and has announced that he is prepared to accept the report in full.

Sir Rhodes Boyson: Is my hon. Friend aware that, whatever the teachers' position in Barnet, in Labour Brent, parents are queuing up to get their children into schools in Conservative Barnet rather than in Labour Brent? Is my


hon. Friend aware that the excellent fifth year and seventh year results in Barnet and Harrow are some of the best in the country?

Mr. Rumbold: My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. It is hardly surprising that parents in areas where the schools are not producing the results are opting to send their children to schools in authorities such as Conservative-controlled Barnet, where the results are obviously good. Barnet is the top authority in the country for good academic results.

Mr. Straw: Is that why parents in Barnet are queuing up to send their children to schools in Labour-controlled ILEA and is that why the net flow there is towards ILEA and not away from it? If the Minister is, as she claims, winning the battle on teacher shortages, why has the education officer in Barnet, Mr. Gill, had to write a desperate letter to every teacher and parent in Barnet, asking if they know anyone, "friends, relatives or neighbours" who would like to be a teacher in Barnet?
Why, in the past seven years, have teacher resignations in primary and secondary schools risen by 260 per cent.? Is that what 10 years of Thatcherism has done to the Prime Minister's own back yard?

Mrs. Rumbold: No, it is not. The 10 years of Thatcherism have been successful, not only in Barnet, but right across the country and are proving to be most successful in education which, in previous years was so deplorable that it had to undergo a substantial change and the substantial reform that was introduced last year by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State in the Education Reform Act 1988.

Mr. Nicholas Bennett: Is my hon. Friend aware that until 1974 graduates could be employed by local education authorities in shortage subjects without a postgraduate certificate of education? Will she look at the system used in the United States where graduates are trained part-time in the evenings and in the holidays while they are teaching? Will she also consider a system of paying extra money to teachers in shortage subjects and in shortage areas?

Mrs. Rumbold: We shall most certainly look at both those suggestions. My hon. Friend is aware that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State is about to introduce schemes for licensed and for articled teachers which will allow graduates to be articled or licensed and to teach in the classroom while gaining their professional qualifications.

Licensed Teachers

Mr. Matthew Taylor: To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Science how many licensed teachers he estimates will be recruited in the next two academic years.

Mr. Butcher: The number of licensed teachers will depend on the suitability of candidates presenting themselves for licensed teacher status and the extent to which local education authorities and school governing bodies wish to appoint them.

Mr. Taylor: Does the Minister agree that the most suitable people to help in teaching are those who are already there, but that they are being forced out of education because of the lack of morale under the Government and the difficulties with pay and conditions

and with operating under the various changes that the Government have introduced? Would it not be better to tackle those things and to start talking to teachers once again through some proper machinery instead of trying to introduce failed and under-qualified ex-executives into teaching?

Mr. Butcher: Teachers' pay has increased by 40 per cent. in the past three years. In looking for signs about whether morale is improving or otherwise, the House will recognise that the response of the teaching profession to the major reform of GCSE and the extent to which teachers are opting for training, with enthusiasm, on the national curriculum are not signs of a profession that is demoralised. We have a great deal of hope for the future but, of course, we want to continue to address the difficulties of geographical and subject teacher shortages.

Mr. Patrick Thompson: In connection with the recruitment of teachers and other related issues, and bearing in mind that the voice of teachers is divided between at least four unions, will my hon. Friend and his colleagues look again at the idea of a professional teachers council to represent and to raise the professional standards of teachers in every way?

Mr. Butcher: That idea has been mooted fairly often in the past few years. Some teachers in the profession would like an organisation that would speak for them as a professional body and not as a politicised, unionised body. That issue is still open. Either through ignorance or otherwise some of the teachers' unions have made assertions on the subject of licensed teachers which are quite untrue. At the moment, graduates without initial teacher training represent about 7 per cent. of qualified teachers in secondary schools and 39 per cent. of teachers in secondary schools are not graduates. What we propose will do nothing to dilute the professionalism of the profession.

Mr. Straw: Will it be possible for applicants who have completed two years of higher education but who have failed their teaching practice on either a BEd or a PGCE course to be eligible for licensed teacher status?

Mr. Butcher: Let us assume that such an individual has an HND, which is not a graduation in the strict sense of the word. That person would be eligible to do two years' teacher training in a school. Only if he satisfies those who must assess him for that can he enter into the profession. I am not aswering an unequivocal "yes" to the hon. Gentleman's question. I would like to look at it in a little further detail and write to him. But everyone has to have two years' higher education, O-level GCSE in English and maths and two years' training in the schools. I would have thought that those were all excellent proposals.

Mr. Gerald Bowden: Considering the difficulty of recruiting suitably qualified people in the teaching profession, can my hon. Friend confirm the reports that the city technology college in Nottingham, which had advertised 13 teacher posts, has had over 900 teachers expressing interest in them and 250 firm applications?
Does this not suggest that, where the school regime is right, teachers will want to go there?

Mr. Butcher: I say to anyone who has any doubts about the ethos and efficacy of CTCs that they should go to Nottingham and talk to that excellent head and director.


He is going to build and staff an inner-city school which will change the life chances of inner-city children. That is what CTCs are all about. He is making those children fit for the world of work and they will be whole men and women into the bargain.

Religious Education

Mr. Janner: To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Science what representations he has received concerning the provision of non-Christian religious teaching as part of the national core curriculum.

Mrs. Rumbold: All maintained schools must provide religious education but it is not part of the national curriculum. The content of religious education is for local determination.

Mr. Janner: Is the Minister aware that parents who belong to minority faiths are increasingly concerned at what they feel to be inadequate provision for worship and education in their faiths where there is a substantial number of children of a particular faith in a school? Does she recognise that this anxiety has increased since the Education Reform Act 1968 and is shared by parents of the Hindu, Moslem, Jewish and other religions? Is she proposing to do anything as a result of the representations that she has received to meet these concerns?

Mrs. Rumbold: Certainly. We have taken careful note of the various representations that have been made to us. In terms of the act of worship, of course, the provision for parents to he allowed to withdraw their children remains as it was under the Education Act 1944. It may help the hon. and learned Gentleman if I say that not every act of worship in a county school will have to be either wholly or mainly broadly Christian in character, provided that the majority of acts of worship are. The head will have to take into account the family background of the pupils concerned when deciding on the precise nature of worship to be provided. As I have said, parents still have the option to withdraw their children if they so wish.

Miss Emma Nicholson: Does my hon. Friend not agree that teaching Christianity properly within the core curriculum provides a foundation for the teaching of comparative religion and indeed the degree subject of theology taught in many universities uses Christianity as the foundation and brings in other religions in the comparative framework? In that context, does she not agree that it is proper that Her Majesty's inspectors should monitor the teaching of religious education in the core curriculum?

Mrs. Rumbold: It is certainly right that, as my hon. Friend says, religious education should be monitored by Her Majesty's inspectors when they are looking at what is happening in the basic teaching of religious education. It is also right that religious education should refleect the central place of Christianity in our religious traditions. But the Act requires that local syllabuses should take account of the teaching and practices of all the principal religions in Great Britain. I hope that that will go some way towards answering my hon. Friend's question.

HM Inspectorate (Performance Indicators)

Mr. Gill: To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Science what performance indicators are available to him in measuring the effectiveness of Her Majesty's inspectorate.

Mr. Kenneth Baker: The performance of Her Majesty's inspectors may be judged by the timely and effective advice they provide to me and my Department on policy matters; by the number, range and quality of their reports and publications, and their inspections; and by the extent to which I am kept appropriately informed about educational standards and trends.

Mr. Gill: Does my right hon. Friend consider that the retention of the core of Her Majesty's inspectors will be necessary once the full effects of the Education Reform Act 1988 translate themselves into the beneficial results which will derive from society's greater involvement and interest in education, particularly in the light of the answer given earlier this afternoon affecting the teacher appraisal schemes?

Mr. Baker: I am sure that parents will be taking a much greater interest in the performance of schools and their children as a cumulative effect of the result of our reforms. I am certain that there will be a continuing and important need for Her Majesty's inspectors to visit schools. They have increased their number of inspections. During the past 10 years, since we have been in office, the number of inspectors has risen from 430 to 490.

Mr. Madden: Will the Secretary of State arrange for inspectors to consider safety in schools? Will he despatch an inspector immediately to a first school in my constituency where all the electric switches are made of metal and where the electric plugs are sparking? That presents a real danger to the nursery and primary school children and the staff at the school. Will the Secretary of State also send an inspector to the Bradford Conservative-controlled education authority and ask why it is refusing to do anything about those dangers at a time when it has put £5 million into balances and has cut the education budget by millions?

Mr. Baker: There have been substantial increases in capital expenditure in Bradford over the past few years, and that is what that money should have been spent on.

Oral Answers to Questions — PRIME MINISTER

Engagements

Mr. Sillars: To ask the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Tuesday 2 May.

The Prime Minister (Mrs. Margaret Thatcher): This morning I had meetings with ministerial colleagues and others. In addition to my duties in the House, I shall be having further meetings later today. This evening I hope to have an audience of Her Majesty the Queen.

Mr. Sillars: Is the Prime Minister aware that one of the major policy blunders of the past 10 years has been her attempt to use Scotland as an experimental area for the immoral poll tax? Is she aware that, despite the chicken-hearted failure of the Labour leadership,


hundreds of thousands of Scots will not pay and together that army will wreck the poll tax, sink her flagship and inflict a major political defeat upon her later this year?

The Prime Minister: The hon. Gentleman will be aware that under Scottish law, Scotland had already undergone a rating revaluation, and the results were so horrific that we had to change the law. I understand that the official Opposition may want another rating revaluation on a capital basis, which would be even more catastrophic. We have changed to a community charge, which is very much better and fairer. I understand that 99 per cent. of people have already registered, which would indicate an intention to fulfil their duties under the law. They are not only interested in how much they can get, but what is their duty to pay.

Sir Hugh Rossi: To ask the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Tuesday 2 May.

The Prime Minister: I refer my hon. Friend to the reply that I gave some moments ago.

Sir Hugh Rossi: In welcoming my right hon. Friend's personal initiatives over matters of atmospheric pollution, the ozone layer and the greenhouse effect, may I ask her whether anything new has emerged from the much-publicised meeting that she had last week with Ministers in Downing street?

The Prime Minister: My hon. Friend will have seen some reports. The most obvious thing to come out of the meeting was the fact that we need a great deal more scientific evidence. Because there are so many variables to feed into the several climatic models, it is difficult to get scientists with a single opinion on how the climate in the several regions will be affected. Secondly, we noted the excellent progress being made in energy efficiency. We are now using less energy than we were in 1973, with an enormously increased gross domestic product. Thirdly, the most practical and immediate concern was the damaging effect of the destruction of tropical forests. That subject will be raised, I think, at the European summit and also at the economic summit, when we discuss how we can increasingly use aid to preserve those tropical forests.

Mr. Kinnock: Will the Prime Minister tell us why mortgage rates have been higher for longer under her Government than under any other British Government?

The Prime Minister: The right hon. Gentleman knows why they are high at the moment—[Interruption.] It is to ensure that inflation never rises to the 26 per cent. it did under the Labour Government.

Mr. Kinnock: Does the Prime Minister recall her pledge to achieve what she called "reasonable mortgage rates"? Why has she never ever managed to keep that pledge?

The Prime Minister: We have done extremely well in that 3 million people have chosen, under this Government, to own their own home who would never have had that opportunity under Labour. Maybe the proof comes in home ownership and in how very well those who have purchased their homes have done in increasing their value.

Mr. Kinnock: Is the Prime Minister trying to say that we have had higher mortgage rates for longer under her Government because more people, just as in every previous year, have ended up buying their own houses?

The Prime Minister: No. I am saying that 3 million more families own their homes than was the case under Labour and that mortgage rates and interest rates are high because we are determined not to go back to Labour's inflation rate of 26·9 per cent. per annum.

Mr. Cash: To ask the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Tuesday 2 May.

The Prime Minister: I refer my hon. Friend to the reply that I gave some moments ago.

Mr. Cash: Is my right hon. Friend aware of the continuing efforts of the European Legislation Committee to involve the House in more effective scrutiny of European legislation? Is she aware that the French Parliament, following our example, has introduced similar measures? Does she also agree that the more democracy there is in the European Community the better?

The Prime Minister: I know that my hon. Friend and other hon. Members are deeply concerned about the amount of legislation that is coming from Europe. It comes to the Scrutiny Committee of course only when it has got to the legislative stage. My right hon. Friends and I are deeply concerned about the number of proposals in the pipeline. It is extremely difficult to get the full facts about them and we must follow them up at that stage too. I agree with my hon. Friend that we need the scrutiny of national Parliaments and that the more we have the better. We also need to keep a very careful watch on the tendency of the Commission to acquire an increasing competence on many matters that are not necessary for the single market of 1992. That would result in an extremely large bureaucracy, which would be quite wrong.

Mr. Ashdown: Does the Prime Minister realise that when many millions in England and Wales go to the polls to vote on Thursday—the 10th anniversary of her election —they will hope—[Interruption.]—that their single vote counts twice; once for a good councillor, and once against the policies of her Government—against the privatisation of water, against the smashing up of the Health Service and against the poll tax? Does she realise that many millions in Britain, including those who voted for her Government, now ache for the removal of this damaging, disruptive and divisive Government?

The Prime Minister: Nonsense. Does the right hon. Gentleman recall that the privatisation of both of those industries was in the last election manifesto and that we won that election by a 100 majority, for which many people are and will remain profoundly grateful? We are going to win the next one too.

Mr. Baldry: To ask the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Tuesday 2 May.

The Prime Minister: I refer my hon. Friend to the reply that I gave some moments ago.

Mr. Baldry: Has my right hon. Friend had time to consider the Policy Studies Institute report "The School Effect", which shows that too many of our children in too many of our inner-city schools are being betrayed by too many Left-wing education authorities? Instead of pursuing a pretence of multicultural policies, it is time for those local educational authorities to start helping to fulfil


the potential of all their children and to concentrate on traditional ways in which to improve educational standards.

The Prime Minister: I have read reports on that report in the newspapers. I know that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State is anxious that it be published in full because it shows enormous variations in educational standards between schools of similar pupils. That is not right. We must make every effort to see that every child has a good education whatever their background. That is why my right hon. Friend is introducing a national curriculum and is spending so much time on teacher training and extra teacher training so that every child can have a really good education whatever local authority he is in.

Mr. Pendry: To ask the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Tuesday 2 May.

The Prime Minister: I refer the hon. Gentleman to the reply that I gave some moments ago.

Mr. Pendry: Having attended the memorial service at Liverpool last Saturday and having witnessed at first hand the grief of that football-loving city, may I ask the right hon. Lady now to consider that the most fitting and lasting memorial to those who tragically died in Hillsborough last month would be for the Government to provide the funding for a multi-purpose sports facility at Merseyside, in the same spirit as she set aside £19 million for egg producers earlier this year?

The Prime Minister: No, Sir. Some football clubs have spent a great deal, and others—not all in this country—are spending an increasing amount on the standards of their stadiums. The hon. Gentleman will know to which I refer. There is a good deal of money, as he knows, in football. Much of it—perhaps too much—goes on transfer fees and perhaps too little goes on stadiums. We all know that a good deal of the income from football pools also goes on improving stadiums. The hon. Gentleman will be familiar with all of those aspects. I went to the memorial service and of course I shared the grief of the people. I got very much the impression from them that, above all, they wanted all-seat stadiums in the future.

Dr. Twinn: To ask the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Tuesday 2 May.

The Prime Minister: I refer my hon. Friend to the reply that I gave some moments ago.

Dr. Twinn: Is my right hon. Friend aware that better street lighting can cut crime and cut the fear of crime? Will she endorse the findings of the urban programme and the estate action programme, as well as of the British parliamentary lighting group's surveys in Edmonton and Tower Hamlets, that money spent by local authorities on improving street lighting is money well worth spending in the fight against crime?

The Prime Minister: My hon. Friend draws my attention to the work done by the British parliamentary lighting group and to projects in Edmonton and Tower Hamlets, which seem to have shown that where more money is spent on lighting, the level of crime goes down. If that is so, we must look at those results carefully and see whether they can be furthered because we are anxious to reduce the level of crime as fast and as much as we can.

Mr. Barron: Has the Prime Minister read press statements about the attitude of general practitioners in the Vale of Glamorgan in relation to the Government's White Paper on the Health Service? Will she consider withdrawing that White Paper and funding the NHS in a proper manner and not put into effect the actions that are now proposed?

The Prime Minister: No, Sir, and we do not take any lectures on funding the Health Service from Labour Members—[Interruption.] I repeat what I have said in past weeks: for every pound that Labour spent on the NHS, Tories are spending £3. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman will tell that to the people in the Vale of Glamorgan. So, if they want to go back to Labour, that will cut resources, cut hospitals, cut the doctors, cut the nurses, cut their pay and cut the service to patients. Tell that to them.

Mr. Gardiner: To ask the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Tuesday 2 May.

The Prime Minister: I refer my hon. Friend to the reply that I gave some moments ago.

Mr. Gardiner: Further to my right hon. Friend's reply to the question by the hon. Member for Rother Valley (Mr. Barron), although the precise terms of the contract with GPs may be open to negotiation, will she agree that it is imperative that the proposed reforms of the NHS should go ahead and that the welfare of patients demands that the NHS cannot just go on as it is?

The Prime Minister: I agree with my hon. Friend. When the reforms in the NHS are through, it will be a much better service for patients than it now is. I understand why Labour Members do not want the reforms to go through. They know that when they have gone through, their protests and citicisms will be rumbled for what they were —wholly hollow and wholly misrepresentative of the true facts.

Miss Lestor: Is the Prime Minister aware that at the end of her decade as Prime Minister, there are in this country 75,000 missing children? The Government inform me that they do not collect figures nationally. The Children's Society, however, does. What does she intend to do about this problem?

The Prime Minister: The hon. Lady is well aware of the authorities that have a concern to find missing children. She is also well aware that the standard of living, the standard of education and the standard of health introduced under this Government give children a far better chance than they ever had before.

Mr. Tony Lloyd: To ask the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Tuesday 2 May.

The Prime Minister: I refer the hon. Gentleman to the reply that I gave some moments ago.

Mr. Lloyd: Would the right hon. Lady now care to answer the question put by my hon. Friend the Member for Eccles (Miss Lestor)?

The Prime Minister: We have increased the number of police and their pay so that they can carry out all their duties, including that of finding missing children. We have increased the numbers way beyond what the Labour Government did.

Sir Peter Hordern: Has my right hon. Friend had an opportunity to read the report of the Monopolies and Mergers Commission on the supply of beer? Is my right hon. Friend aware that there is widespread interest and admiration for the reforms affecting trade unions, doctors, dentists, lawyers, bankers and brokers, but that when it comes to proposals which may have the effect of closing half the village pubs, does she agree that she may have gone a step too far?

The Prime Minister: I confess that I am not an expert on the subject although it concerns other members of my

family very much. Of course, I am concerned, because of the villages, about the future of the village pub. There is increasing debate about the report, I am sure that my right hon. and noble Friend the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry will take that into account when he considers what to do about the report.

STATUTORY INSTRUMENTS, &amp;c.

Ordered,
That the draft Summer Time Order 1989 be referred to a Standing Committee on Statutory Instruments, &amp;c.—[Mr. Fallon.]

Point of Order

Mr. Max Madden: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. You will no doubt have heard, during Prime Minister's Question Time, the hon. Member for Edmonton (Dr. Twinn) ask a question about more street lighting. I did not have an opportunity to give notice to the hon. Gentleman that I would raise the matter, but it is a classic illustration of the urgent need to reform the rules on Members' interests to require Members to declare an interest if it is relevant at the time. It is important that we should all know that the hon. Member for Edmonton is a consultant to Thorn Lighting Ltd. It is a classic illustration of the need to reform the rules regarding the Register of Members' Interests so that in such circumstances the Member would be required to declare an interest.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. Gentleman could draw that to the attention of the Select Committee, which has already discussed the matter and reported upon it. The Select Committee said that, during Question Time, interests that were declared in the Register did not have to be mentioned on the Floor of the House.

Mr. Nicholas Bennett: Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. Four members of the Labour party who are serving on the Dock Work Bill are sponsored by the Transport and General Workers Union, and none of them has declared that in Committee.

Dr. Ian Twinn: Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. I just wish to confirm that if the rules of the House required it and if it was thought necessary in the interests of the House, I would be only too pleased to declare the interest.

Aircraft (Freedom from Smoking)

Mr. David Martin: I beg to move.
That leave be given to bring in a Bill to permit all passengers on certain aircraft to travel in an atmosphere free from tobacco smoke.
I accept immediately that anyone proposing a measure of this kind must face frankly the question of principle whether the law ought to have a part to play in conferring freedom on some people at the expense of the removal of the freedom of others.
I do not intend to sermonise against smoking. That is a free choice for adults to make for themselves. I would not support a Bill which prevented people from smoking on grounds of harm to themselves, any more than I would support a Bill making illegal the eating of food considered hostile to good health. What I maintain, however, is that people should, in certain circumstances and in certain places, have the freedom to enjoy a smoke-free atmosphere and that that freedom, like the freedom to walk the streets without being assaulted, inevitably rests on lawful restraint being imposed on the freedom of others.
That principle is not novel. It has been conceded over and over again in the House, particularly in the past century and a half, to all Governments of every political complexion in the area of public health and safety. Examples are both commonplace and common sense. It is upon that ground that I base my Bill, including enforcement of its provisions.
My Bill is not about whether someone should smoke, but where. It is not concerned with the effects of smoking on the smoker, but with the effects of smoke on the non-smoker. It is specifically limited to aircraft flights of up to three hours' duration, which effectively means domestic and European destinations. Many other countries have acted already, and I shall refer to that in due course.
All but diehards now accept that there is a serious risk of smoking damaging the smoker's health. It is also generally accepted that, while the risk is small by comparison, there is a risk of damage being done to the health of non-smokers from breathing in tobacco smoke —known as passive smoking. Should any doubts remain on that score, the 1988 fourth report of the independent scientific committee on smoking and health, chaired by Sir Peter Froggatt, should dispel them.
Such reports were predated some 400 years by the famous one-man royal commission of that scourge of tobacco lovers, James VI of Scotland and I of England; a man of whom it has been said that he was never drunk, but he was never quite sober. His conclusion was that smoking was a custom
loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the lungs and in the black, stinking fumes thereof nearest resembling the horrible Stygian smoke of the pit that is bottomless.
With that language he would make rather a good modern press officer for the British Medical Association.
King James later clashed with Sir Walter Raleigh, widely credited with having introduced tobacco into Britain. I do not condone the somewhat extreme retribution exacted from Raleigh by King James who had him executed in 1618, ostensibly for treachery and to please the Spanish. But who knows—perhaps he was the first tobacco martyr.
On the subject of executions, it is interesting to note that the only example of a statutory right to smoke is to be found in the Executions of Sentences of Death (Army) Regulations 1956 and 1959 under which, besides the right to be visited by relatives and a priest, the prisoner under sentence of death
shall be permitted to smoke".
I presume that that official connivance can be justified on the ground that for a person in such a position considerations about the long-term injurious effects of smoking are somewhat superfluous.
In the confined spaces of modern aircraft, the impossibility of escape from fumes, despite attempts at segregation of smokers from non-smokers, increases the health risks, as well as causing irritation, coughing and so on.
My own recent experience of that involved my 10-year-old daughter being forced to sit next to a smoker on a British Airways scheduled flight to Portugal this Easter. I had paid in full nearly five months in advance for all six family seats together. I had rung the airport two days before to emphasise our non-smoking requirements. We arrived at the Gatwick check-in desk in good time only to be told that my wife and I could not sit together with our four young children aged three to 10 years except in the smoking area. My 10-year-old daughter was coughing for half the journey and plaintively asked me, on a fully booked flight, "Can't I sit somewhere else, Daddy?" The answer was no, she could not.
I took the matter up afterwards with British Airways only to be told—in the age of computers, remember—in a letter from its customer relations executive:
It is impracticable to reserve seats for passengers at the time of booking".
British Airways should try running a theatre and tell people that.
It is practicable to take customers' money months in advance, but apparently it is not practicable to guarantee anything in return, except the gamble of having a seat next to one's children with the added chance of sitting next to a chain smoker thrown in. That shows a dreadful lack of consideration for the customer, wholly at variance with the attitude of airline staff, who could not be more pleasant and helpful.
However, credit must be given for BA's advances with regard to smoking on flights. Generally, the smoking of cigars and pipes is not permitted, so the freedom question

has been resolved there. Also, it does not permit the smoking of cigarettes on domestic flights, as is the policy of Air UK on its flights, including those to the Channel Islands. Research indicates that, even among smokers, such policies are welcome, They help them to control the habit and mean that one less activity or pastime is associated with smoking.
For safety reasons, no smoking is permitted in the toilet facilities of aircraft. I fail to see why it should be considered safe to permit it in confined cabin spaces, particularly on tiring night flights, when there is a risk of someone nodding off.
Other countries have already acted to protect not only paying passengers but cabin crews, at a time when it is increasingly recognised that protection for non-smoking employees in workplaces is both reasonable and necessary, particularly where air conditioning and heating arrangements restrict access to direct fresh air. In the United States, flights of up to two hours became no-smoking, by law, from April last year. In that country, an airline must guarantee that a person can book a non-smoking seat, which is a sensible provision and one that I hope we shall adopt.
Air Canada has a no-smoking law on flights that last up to two hours. Scandinavia also imposes such restrictions. The Australian Government banned smoking on all domestic flights from December 1987. Noel Coward said in his play "Private Lives" that China was a big country. The same applies to Australia.
In summary, my Bill is a modest attempt to carry matters a stage further in this country. The time is ripe now, as it was in the 1950s with the belching chimneys of London, to put the health and safety considerations of the non-smoker before the considerations of freedom of the smoker, and to call in aid the law in the limited respects that I have outlined. I commend my Bill to the House.

Question put and agreed to.
Bill ordered to be brought in by Mr. David Martin, Mr. Timothy Kirkhope, Mr. Graham Bright, Mrs. Marion Roe, Miss Ann Widdecombe, Mr. David Evans and Mr. Matthew Carrington.

AIRCRAFT (FREEDOM FROM SMOKING)

Mr. David Martin accordingly presented a Bill to permit all passengers on certain aircraft to travel in an atmosphere free from tobacco smoke. And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time upon Friday 7 July and to be printed. [Bill 131.]

Opposition Day

9TH ALLOTTED DAY

Mr. Speaker: I regret that the order of the two motions on the Order Paper for today's Opposition business does not accord with that announced by the Leader of the House last Thursday. I propose to revert to our original intention, that the National Health Service debate should come first and the teacher shortages debate should come second.

NHS White Paper (Doctors' Response)

Mr. Robin Cook: I beg to move,
That this House, noting that every independent organisation representing medical opinion has recorded the deep concern of doctors at the White Paper 'Working for Patients', and recognising that the concern of doctors arises from the serious threat to their patients reflected in Her Majesty's Government's determination to introduce market forces into health care, regrets that Ministers have failed to respond to informed criticism other than by impugning the motives of their critics; affirms its support for the basic principles of the National Health Service that patients should receive the treatment they need, not the treatment they or their doctor can afford; and calls upon Her Majesty's Government to prove its proposals by pilot projects before imposing them on the profession, and to postpone any legislation for a structural change in the National Health Service until it can be first submitted to the electorate in a General Election.

Mr. Speaker: I have to tell the House that I have selected the amendment in the name of the Prime Minister.

Mr. Cook: When the former Secretary of State for Health, the right hon. Member for Croydon, Central (Mr. Moore) announced the review to a rather startled nation, he said that the impact on the nation's health could be as dramatic as the discovery of penicillin. The outcome of the review had a dramatic and electrifying effect on the medical profession. It was so dramatic and electrifying that it has been rejected by every organisation representing medical opinion, not just by the British Medical Association.
I noted at last week's Health Question Time that the BMA held a special place in the affections of Conservative Members. That place is somewhere between the National Union of Mineworkers and members of the national dock labour scheme. The review has also been rejected by the joint consultants committee, representing ten royal colleges. It was also rejected by the Royal College of Nursing. Almost exactly a year ago, that college gave the Secretary of State's predecessor a standing ovation.
Some of the opposition from organisations representing medical opinion does not seem to have been anticipated. A fortnight ago, in reply to a question, the Prime Minister quoted, approvingly, a doctor who said that the White Paper
embodies so much of what the Royal College has been working for over the years."—[Official Report; 11 April 1989; Vol. 150 c. 736.]
Six days later, the Royal College of General Practitioners voted, by 49 votes to one, to reject the White Paper.
In a statement explaining why it could not support the White Paper, the college said:

As an academic body, it must state that, just as it opposes medical treatment based on guess, so it must regret the treatment of a whole health service on hunch.
Even those who have tried desperately to like the White Paper have found it a forbidding task. The Institute of Health Services Management, which represents overwhelmingly members on short-term fee contracts to the Government, did the best that it could, but even it could not avoid coming out with the statement that the White Paper was likely to produce in the Health Service "confusion and fragmentation."
Nor is it only the institutions that have come out against the White Paper. The notion that a few activists in those bodies are manipulating the membership is pure fantasy. Dozens—scores—of doctors' meetings have been held around the country, but not one has found a majority in favour of the White Paper. I shall mention only one of those meetings: in Barnet, 170 doctors, including doctors from the Prime Minister's constituency, assented unanimously to the proposition that the White Paper could not work.
I know that Conservative Members are well aware of the strength of feeling among doctors: I know that because I keep being sent the letters that they have sent back to doctors who write to them. I treasure particularly a letter from the hon. Member for Milton Keynes (Mr. Benyon), who wrote to a general practitioner in his constituency, replying to his comments on the White Paper:
I must tell you that I have never read such unhelpful, negative and totally conservative comment.
I like the hon. Gentleman's equation of "negative" and "unhelpful" with "conservative". I have always suspected the hon. Gentleman of being something of a dissident on the Conservative Benches. I assure him that his general practitioner is happy to agree with his phraseology—that the White Paper is negative, unhelpful and conservative.
I notice that the amendment tabled by the Prime Minister and her right hon. Friends
welcomes the widespread medical support for the objectives of the White Paper".
We must handle that phrase with care. The objectives of the White Paper, as stated in it, are unexceptionable: broadly speaking, it is in favour of patients living longer and against their dying. However, I challenge the Secretary of State—it is the first of a few challenges that I shall issue to him in my speech—to produce the name of a single medical organisation that has welcomed the proposals in the White Paper.
In case the Secretary of State rises to the challenge by responding that the Conservative Medical Society has welcomed the proposals, let me tell him that that particular case is rather suspect, as there is some doubt about whether it carried out the ballot of its members before announcing its decision.

Mr. Jerry Hayes: The hon. Gentleman has specifically mentioned medical organisations. Is that so that he can leave out the National Association of Health Authorities in England and Wales, which welcomed the report, or does he consider it rather inconsequential to take into account the views of those who actually run the Health Service?

Mr. Cook: If the hon. Gentleman reads the comments of the National Association of Health Authorities, he will find that they are much more carefully balanced than he has suggested. It is, however, hardly surprising that members of health authorities have welcomed the


Government's proposals, as the Government have spent the past 10 years stuffing those health authorities with their placemen and placewomen.
The Secretary of State's response to this overwhelming opposition is to insist that none of it will stop him. As he said in a lecture to the Royal College of Nursing, these changes will happen whether we like them or not, and whatever we say. It may surprise hon. Members, given the defiant ring of that statement, to learn that we are at present in a consultative period. The extent to which the right hon. and learned Gentleman is willing to enter into a dialogue with doctors during that consultative period was discovered by doctors in the Vale of Glamorgan last week, when he pushed his way through them, leaving behind the sole intelligible question on which he had consulted them: "Where is my car?"
In this alleged consultation, the Secretary of State is displaying an arrogance which sits uncomfortably with his supposed role as an accountable Minister in a democratic country. In a week in which we ruefully reflect on what 10 years of the present Prime Minister have meant for the nation, I warn the Secretary of State that the nation is heartily sick of this style of hectoring, opinionated government.

Mr. Tony Favell: Does it really come as any surprise to the hon. Gentleman that the general practitioners oppose the White Paper? After all, has he found many barristers in favour of the Lord Chancellor's proposals, or many scheme dockers who favour the abolition of the dock labour scheme?

Mr. Cook: The odd thing is that I remember that, on 31 January, the Secretary of State, when unveiling the £1 million package to communicate to doctors and to medical opinion how useful and wonderful his proposals were, said nothing about doctors being against the proposals or that he expected general practitioners to be against them. On the contrary, everything said at the time to defend the £1 million expenditure was about how important it was to communicate these ideas so that people employed in the Health Service could understand and agree with them. The people involved certainly understood, but whether or not they agreed with the proposals is an entirely different matter.
Since this point has been raised, I can say to the Secretary of State that, as a result of one of his six consultations with the West Middlesex hospital, on the night of his presentation of 31 January we were able to recruit seven people to the Labour party who applied on the spot for membership.

Dame Jill Knight: Is the hon. Gentleman able to cite a single instance of any reform suggested by any Government to the National Health Service, from its inception 40 years ago, to which the doctors have had no objection?

Mr. Cook: It is perfectly true that a number of concerned doctors in 1948 opposed the setting up of the NHS, as did the Conservative party at that time. However, it is certainly not the case that doctors are opposed to all changes in the Health Service.

Mr. Robert McCrindle: rose—

Mr. Cook: I have given way generously to hon. Gentlemen and the hon. Lady, but, as I am conscious that this is a three-hour debate and that other hon. Members will wish to speak, I must decline to give way on this occasion.
To comprehend the bitterness of general practitioners, it is necessary to understand how they have been deceived by this Government. For a year, the representatives of general practitioners have been negotiating on the practitioners' contract. In the course of that year, the representatives were repeatedly assured that nothing in the White Paper would affect general practitioners and their contract. That assurance was repeated at a meeting on 21 December last year.
General practitioners first heard that the assurance was inoperative on 18 January, when the Department of Health cancelled the February meeting of the negotiators in order to give general practitioners time to consider how the White Paper would affect the practitioners' contract. A fortnight later they received the White Paper, which contained two major departures. First, it has thrown into reverse the drive by successive Governments to encourage general practitioners to take fewer patients on their list. Instead, the new contract proposes to increase the per capita element by a third, rewarding those general practitioners who hoard patients and penalising those who want to keep the list to a number to whom they can give individual attention.
That departure will have an impact on general practitioners and an even bigger impact on their patients. More patients on every list means less time for each patient. It is purely double-speak for the Secretary of State to describe this measure as encouraging general practitioners to take on more patients in order to improve the quality of service to each patient.
The second major change that general practitioners discovered on reading the White Paper was that the Secretary of State proposes to entice GPs in larger practices into practice budgets. The essential problem with practice budgets is that they will result in a conflict of interest. When GPs see a patient now, they have to ask themselves only what treatment the patient needs. In future, with a practice budget, they will have to ask themselves a second question: what treatment can the practice afford? It is because of that conflict of interest that there will be a suspicion in the mind of the patient that he or she is not being recommended for the best treatment. It will destroy the trust of the patient in his or her doctor. As one doctor expressed it graphically, when a patient looks into the eyes of his or her GP, the patient wants to see reflected in those eyes his own anguish, not the calculations of an accountant.
Another major proposal in the White Paper which has also caused concern to doctors is that hospitals should opt out of—

The Secretary of State for Health (Mr. Kenneth Clarke): The hon. Gentleman implies that the White Paper was an act of bad faith over the negotiations on the contract, because we introduced two changes. Will he pause in his reading of his Tavistock house brief to explain that an increase in the capitation element of the contract was floated in the White Paper on primary health care 18 months earlier? That was nothing new. Furthermore, GP practice budgets have nothing to do with the negotiation of the GP contract. On what grounds does the hon.


Gentleman support the BMA's assertion, which it appears to have given him, that the White Paper interrupted the 12 months of negotiations on the GP contract?

Mr. Cook: The right hon. and learned Gentleman is being characteristically offensive by suggesting that I have come to the House armed with a brief from Tavistock house or anywhere else. I do not claim for myself much credit, but I claim for myself the credit of preparing my own speeches; they are not prepared for me. I take issue with the tone of the right hon. and learned Gentleman's question and the abuse with which it was accompanied. If he wishes to make more rapid progress, the House should be treated as a place for open debate, not as a place for abuse.
The right hon. and learned Gentleman asked two questions. I shall respond first to his second question. He cannot claim that the practice budget proposal does not have a bearing on the GP contract. Such an argument is Jesuitical. His claim that it was foreshadowed 18 months ago in the White Paper will not stand up to examination. The Government said in that White Paper that they intended to increase the capitation proportion from 47 per cent. to 50 per cent. The January White Paper said that the Government intended to increase the proportion from 47 per cent. to 60 per cent. There is a big difference between the two figures.
The other major proposal in the White Paper that is causing concern to doctors is that hospitals should opt out of local authority control, that they should be free standing, that they should not be accountable to the local health authority, that no local council members should be able to serve on the governing body and ask difficult questions and that their only obligation should be to make ends meet by marketing their services. As the joint consultants committee observed:
These proposals inevitably change the prime aim of the management of these hospitals from the provision of adequate care to the community as a whole to the financial success of the hospital.
What will it mean when hospitals have to change their prime management aim from the provision of care to the community to the financial success of the hospital? The long-term consequences of that financial pressure have been obligingly spelt out by the director of the private Lister hospital. He has asked what lessons can be learned from his experience of running a private hospital by those hospitals that choose to opt out. Helpfully having asked that question, he then provides the answers. In his article he writes:
The opt-out hospital will need to make firm decisions as to which services to promote and which are uncompetitive. Some specialties may have to go. The problem of unsuccessful specialties will be a real one. For how long could one carry a loss-making specialty including its medical team?
I invite the House to note the revealing way in which the director of the Lister hospital defines an unsuccessful specialty. An unsuccessful specialty is not one which offers poor quality of care or care that patients do not need in the community; an unsuccessful specialty is a loss-making specialty. That is the reality of what will happen with the opt-out hospitals. Care will be defined according to which specialty can provide the most generous mark-up on the treatment, not the care that is most needed by the community.
What happens to hospitals if they fail to move with the times and persist in offering loss-making specialties? The disaster of the Lister hospital has a neat phrase: they will

be "shaken out of the market". Not closed, mark you, but shaken out of the market. It is a pity that the director of the Lister hospital has not been working for the Department of Health for the last 10 years; otherwise, we could have learnt that the 300 hospitals closed under this Government were not closed but shaken out of the market and the 20,000 beds we have lost in the last 10 years were not cut, but shaken out of the market. Also shaken out of the market, of course, is any commitment to the National Heath Service as a public service to every community in which there is a district general hospital providing ready access to a comprehensive range of medical services.
The right hon. Gentleman is not just nurturing a threat to the Health Service: what he is proposing is an affront to our democracy. He has sent an instruction to every regional health authority to provide by next Monday a list of volunteer hospitals for opt-out. They in turn are instructing unit general managers to volunteer for opt-out. I do not doubt that by Monday the right hon. Gentleman will have his list of volunteers. What I find thoroughly offensive is what he proposes will happen next, which is that he, and he alone, will then decide whether they opt out. The decision on opt-out will be taken in a smoke-filled room, and most of the smoke will come from the Secretary of State's cigar.
What happened to all the talk of greater local decision-making? What happened to the promises of patient choice? If the Secretary of State is serious about choice in local decision-making, why not give local people the choice of whether their hospital opts out?
I issue my second challenge. If the right hon. and learned Gentleman seriously believes opt-out is so good, let him put it to the vote of the local community. Let it be decided by the local community which that hospital serves and which in many cases was the community which once upon a time paid for the buildings that the Secretary of State proposes to give away.
There is an obvious comparison with the speed with which the Secretary of Stale is proceeding in his White Paper. His proposals were conceived in haste and are now being imposed with premature haste. Just over a year ago, the right hon. Gentleman's predecessor received the Griffiths report on community care. There has been no progress there, no timetable for consultation, no urgent circulars to regional managers and no promise of legislation in the next Parliament.
I give the Secretary of State my third challenge. His Government owe us a debate on the White Paper in Government time. Having taken so long to find that time, before he comes back to the House to debate this White Paper, let us have his Government's response to the Griffiths report on community care, so we can put it side by side with the White Paper and see what sense they make together. It is almost three years since the National Audit Office observed that, in community care, doing nothing is not an option. That is precisely what the right hon. Gentleman has chosen to do, and we all know why. It is because Sir Roy Griffiths had the bad taste to point out that, if we are serious about developing the health and social services which will enable the elderly and the handicapped to live full and rewarding lives in the community, we must provide extra resources and responsibilities to the local authority which delivers those services to the community.
Labour councils have a clearer understanding than the right hon. and learned Gentleman of what elderly people


need to keep them in the community and to keep them healthy. Yesterday, I released a league table that ranked local authorities by the number of home helps per thousand elderly people. Only one solitary Conservative council made it into the top 20 councils in that league table. Conversely, not one majority Labour council was to be found in the bottom 20. That is the difference between our parties' understanding of community care.
If Conservative Members consider that observation too partisan, I can offer them an observation with which they will agree. The record of the Democrats is even worse than theirs. Out of seven councils under Democratic administration, a clear majority are in the bottom 20 of that league table. That record shows that the Labour party understands the changing direction which health and social services need to meet the challenge of the rapid growth in very elderly people. Instead, the White Paper offers us the fatuous irrelevance of tax relief on private medical cover for the elderly.
We need to integrate the hospital and primary care services to get into the communities the diagnostic skills we keep locked up in our hospitals. Instead, the White Paper proposes that those hospitals will opt out and that consultants will meet GPs mainly to price a contract. We need to change the Health Service from a rescue service into a service that promotes health and prevents ill health. The White Paper contains not a single proposal for health promotion. It is full of measures that will cost treating illness but puts no price on health. I have outlined the basis of Labour's programme for health, which we shall be publishing this month at a launch cost rather less than the 1·5 million that the right hon. and learned Gentleman spent on the White Paper.
The fundamental difference between our proposals and the Secretary of State's White Paper is that our proposals will rest on our commitment to a Health Service in which resources are allocated by medical and social need and are not marketed by commercial demand.
I conclude with my final challenge to the Secretary of State. I noted that the Minister of State observed that the Government have been elected to govern and will not shirk the task of government. No one can deny that the Government have been elected to govern, but no one, not even the Government, can claim that they were elected to carry out such changes to the NHS. Where in the last Conservative manifesto were those proposals spelt out to the electorate? Where in the last manifesto were the electorate warned that hospitals would be encouraged to opt out and GPs encouraged to volunteer for cash limits? My final challenge to the Secretary of State is this: if he is so convinced that his proposals are right for the nation, that they will produce a better Health Service and more choice for patients, let us put it to the test of electoral opinion and find out whether Conservative Members are elected to govern while chained to those policies. If he puts it to the electorate, I assure the Secretary of State of our full co-operation in spelling it out to the electorate so that they thoroughly understand what the right hon. and learned Gentleman is proposing. In the meantime, I ask the right hon. and learned Gentleman, as it is our right to ask in this democratic Chamber, to put off legislation on these drastic changes until we have put them to an electoral contest.
I do not doubt that the Secretary of State will win the vote tonight. He has already lost the public debate. He came to office with no mandate for such changes. Since taking office, he has been unable to win any support for them. If he persists in abusing his majority in Parliament to push them through, he will not only destroy the trust between patients and doctors; he will undermine the faith of those patients in this place as a democratic institution.

The Secretary of State for Health (Mr. Kenneth Clarke): I beg to move, to leave out from "House" to the end of the Question and to add instead thereof:
welcomes the widespread medical support for the objectives of the White Paper "Working for Patients" and believes that the proposals in that White Paper will enable the health service and individual doctors to respond better to the needs and wishes of patients, extend patient choice, delegate responsibility to where the services are provided and secure the best value for money; affirms its support for the basic principles of the National Health Service which will be strengthened by the early implementation of the White Paper proposals; and looks forward to the constructive contributions from medical organisations to achieve that.
By a curious turn of events, this is the first debate on the National Health Service in which the hon. Member for Livingston (Mr. Cook) and I have taken part since I came to my present office last July, with the exception of some exchanges on the dental and optical charges, which he will recall. We are shortly to have a debate in Government time on the White Paper reforms, so we are about to make up for that and to discuss Health Service matters at considerable length.
The Opposition have chosen to found their motion on the subject of the doctors' opposition to the National Health Service reforms. I shall concentrate on that and save many of my remarks for the debate on the White Paper. I want to talk about the points raised by doctors, some against and some in favour of the White Paper. I shall explain the present position to the House and examine the sudden, new relationship between the Labour party and the doctors. I do not believe that the opposition of the two groups to the reforms is based on the same premises. The Labour party's sudden discovery of the doctors' position is nothing other than political opportunism, because it sees a dispute apparently breaking out.
The House should begin the debate on the basis that the best members of the medical profession are interested in the Health Service above all from the point of view of their own patients. One of the tests that the best members of the medical profession will apply, just as the public outside will, is what the overall impact of the reforms will be on the way in which the Health Service delivers care to patients. When one examines the highly complex proposals which I and the Government have put forward, one has to try to form a picture of the effect on the Health Service in four or five years' time—or more—and how patients will appreciate what the reforms have done to improve the service for them. The one simple aim of the Government is that the National Health Service should be made a better Health Service from the point of view of patients and their families. That is the yardstick that should be applied to each proposal that the Government are putting forward.
We have a long way to go before the reforms come fully into effect, but in a few years' time, when patients look back on the battles over the review, they will see that the


principles of the Health Service remain intact, that, the service remains free and financed by the taxpayer and that it is delivered according to medical priority and need. But they will find that many other changes have taken place in a Health Service run in a more business-like and efficient way, because it will be run in a more consumer-conscious way as well. The Health Service will be keeping up to date.
Patients tend to approach the Health Service firstly through the agency of general practice and most of us look, for ourselves and our families, to our GP as our continual health adviser and as our guide to the rest of the system. From now on, patients will be freer to decide which practice they wish to join and they will be able to make that choice on the basis of much better information. At present, people choose their GP—with whom, I accept, they are usually fully satisfied—on the basis of word of mouth recommendations from neighbours. Many of us do not have much experience of what general practice is like outside the practices that we have experienced ourselves. In future, practices will produce information leaflets. Thanks to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission, practices will be able to advertise if they wish and will put before patients and would-be patients the services offered to families, the opening times of the surgery and any other particular features.

Mr. John Battle: Will the Secretary of State give way?

Mr. Clarke: I shall give way in a moment when I have given some more examples of what patients will find coming out of the reforms. Patients will probably choose the practices that offer high standards and new services, which we are encouraging by the new contract I intend to negotiate with the British Medical Association. I shall return to the subject of the contract negotiations in a moment.
The hon. Member for Livingston said that nothing in our proposals dealt with the promotion of health and the prevention of disease which, as he rightly said, have to be part of the policy for the future of the Health Service. The new contract proposals, which we have been discussing with the BMA for so long, are founded heavily on just such principles. In four or five years' time, patients will expect to receive from their practices regular health checks, offered to all patients if they so wish, and especially better and more regular contact with older patients over the age of 75. There will also be regular surveillance by GPs of children under the age of five. Under our proposals, there should also be high levels of immunisation against disease for children and screening of female cancers. Those are some of the aims that we have set out.
There will also be more personal visits by doctors from the practice that the patient joins instead of excessive use of a deputising service out of hours. As a result of our wider reforms, when a patient visits a GP he will be given better information than now about where the waiting times are longest in his locality and about the medical quality of the service being provided by the hospital.
Whether or not a GP has a practice budget, he will have more contact with and more influence over the developments of the hospital and community services in his area because he will be in contact with his district health authority. General practitioners are not in contact now with their DHAs about referral patterns. In future

how the DHAs use their money to place contracts with hospitals will reflect the referral practices of the local GPs. We are bringing GPs and DHAs together to collaborate.
If a patient has a GP with his own practice budget, the patient will be attending the practice of a general practitioner who has access to taxpayers' money on a scale not known before to doctors, which will mean that the doctor can take into account the quality of care, waiting times, and the preference of the patient when determining how health authority money is used in that area.
Those are big changes in general practice, and when patients evaluate those improvements we shall have a more considered view of our proposals—

Mr. Allen McKay: rose—

Mr. Clarke: I turn now to the hospital and community services. Patients will find that management of all hospitals will be delegated much more to the local people, to the doctors, the nurses and managers in the hospital itself— that is, to people who are closer to patient care than the people in the hierarchy of bureaucracy that we have now. Those people will decide on the use of resources, the management of the hospital and on the development of the service in their town.
Units will have resources coming in with the patient to match the work that they are doing. They will receive money in response to the demands made by the district health authorities and the GPs, who will refer patients and provide the necessary funds using their budgets. The system of encouraging hospitals to attract resources to their areas of strength will tend to bring the quality of all services up to the level of the best. Competition between them will bring down waiting times as well as raising the quality of the outturn from different specialists.
When we have finished our reforms, all hospitals will strive to please GPs and patients with the other things that they should all have now, such as reliable appointment systems, clear and sensitive explanations to patients of what is happening to them and of what is going to happen, and a whole range of optional extras and amenities available to patients who want to pay for them.
That is what the patient will appreciate. I do not believe that the Labour party will be wholly content, looking back, to realise that, because of what seemed a monetary political advantage, it has placed itself in a position whereby it opposes the development of general practice, the giving of more local autonomy to hospital and community services and the opportunity of making a better Health Service for patients.

Mr. Battle: rose—

Mr. Kevin Barron: rose—

Mr. Clarke: I give way to the hon. Member for Leeds, West (Mr. Battle).

Mr. Battle: How does the Secretary of State square all that he has just said with the push in the opposite direction from the Treasury, which is offering tax incentives to elderly people to move out of the National Health Service and in the direction of private practice? Is such a move the Secretary of State's real intention?

Mr. Clarke: Last year we obtained from the Treasury an extra £2,000 million for the services and an extra £1,000 million or thereabouts for the nurses' grading. We ended


the autumn settlement last year with spending plans 5 per cent. above inflation. Under this Government spending on the National Health Service is now second in the league of spending on public departments. We now spend more on the NHS than we do on the Ministry of Defence. It is obvious that spending on the Health Service will increase rapidly, but to say that spending more money is, in itself, a form of health care policy and that we should ignore inefficiences and the need to raise quality or to make the service more responsive is not an adequate policy, whether it be the policy of the Opposition or of any part of the medical profession. Anything that induces people who want to spend their own money in retirement to provide for some of their health care, such as for elective surgery, thereby reducing pressure on the Health Service, does no harm to the Health Service but enables us to make better use of the money that we obtain.
The Opposition's motion is about doctors. I have dealt with the benefits to patients, and there will be great benefit to doctors as well. It is all very well to say that there is no support from any organisation representing doctors. There are not all that many organisations representing doctors. What tends to happen is that there are endless sub-committees of the same organisation which keep doing the same thing.
I was at a BMA meeting at Tavistock house this morning. It was a meeting of the general manager branch, but all the participants were doctors, and the majority of those asking questions were in favour of these reforms.

Mr. Frank Dobson: The right and learned Gentleman appointed them all.

Mr. Clarke: I did not appoint a solitary one. The hon. Gentleman was, in his time, an extremely effective spokesman on health matters but he has forgotten that the general managers of health authorities are appointed by district health authorities. The unit managers, who were about two thirds of those present this morning, are also appointed by the district health authority and I do not have the gift of a solitary general management post at my disposal.
As I say, they are in favour of benefits for patients above all, but there are benefits for doctors, too.

Mr. Dobson: Is it not true that all these apparently independent general managers/doctors to whom the right and learned Gentleman talked today are on three-year contracts and notes are taken by officials in that Box as to who does or does not collaborate?

Mr. Clarke: This Opposition motion talks about members of the Government traducing the motives of those who disagree with them. That is something, I strongly argue, that I have not done, and nor has my right hon. Friend. The hon. Gentleman referred to the opinion of the National Association of Health Authorities in England and Wales, which is in favour of our proposals, and immediately insisted that it is a collection of placemen. An awful lot of card-carrying members of the Labour party in that association will be very surprised to hear that. I cite to the hon. Member that I have attended a meeting this morning organised by the BMA to discuss with a number of doctors their reaction to the White Paper and

that most of them were in favour, and many of them strongly in favour, of the broad principles of the White Paper and he says that they are all on three-year contracts.
The Opposition are deaf except to what they regard as the short-term political opportunity to join in a row which they do not wholly understand.

Mr. Andrew Rowe: Is my right hon. and learned Friend aware that in the autumn of last year my local hospital closed a ward because the surgeons operating therein were working so effectively and quickly that, in their attempt to reduce their waiting list, they overstepped their budget within about three months? That is an absurdity and they are very much in favour of changing the system to make it impossible for it to happen again.

Mr. Clarke: I entirely agree with my hon. Friend. That is one of the principal benefits from what we are proposing that doctors immediately appreciated. At the moment, there is what is sometimes called the efficiency trap, where a hospital is so much in demand and organises itself so well that it increases its work load but, because we only distribute the money by formula, it is told to stop. Indeed, I think they are gilding the lily somewhat, but only recently some Birmingham consultants claimed that they were told to go and play golf rather than carry on doing their work.
I have not met for some weeks now a member of the medical profession who does not think that it is an improvement to provide that, when patients are attracted from district health authorities or general practitioners, the resources will go with them, and that that is a much more sensible way of proceeding.
Doctors also see other advantages. The point of the general practitioners' contract, which I trust we can settle, is that those who work hardest, introduce new services and reach good standards will be rewarded best. Many GPs think that aim is wholly desirable. Indeed, the BMA does not differ from me in my aims for the contract. Those GPs with practice budgets will, as I have already said, have much greater influence over where NHS funds can be used for the benefit of their patients. For doctors in hospital and community services there will be relief from the absurd situation that tends to hit the best—the situation which my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Kent (Mr. Rowe) described.
They will also find that more responsibility has been delegated to their hospitals. As clinicians, they will be more involved, they will have more influence over management decisions and they will carry more responsibility for the decisions. I find everywhere that doctors welcome the introduction of what I would regard, as a layman, as quality control and what the doctors call medical audit, whereby they can systematically ensure that standards are properly set for the service and are monitored so that the medical standards remain extremely high.

Mr. Max Madden: Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman give way?

Mr. Clarke: I shall carry on giving way steadily, but, as this is a short debate, I apologise that I cannot give way to all.
Given my description of the aim of the reforms and my belief in their benefits, it is surprising that the present bitter controversy has arisen between the Government and, on


the one hand, the Labour party—and, to some extent the centre parties as well—and, on the other, the British Medical opposition—British Medical Association—[Interruption.] That is certainly my most Freudian slip of the tongue so far. Although they are both in opposition, there are a limited number of similarities between the Labour party and the BMA. One thing they have in common is that both of them denounced the proposals and began to campaign against them before they were even published. Returning to the letter from my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes (Mr. Benyon) that was quoted by the hon. Member for Livingston, it appears that both the Labour party and the BMA can be described as conservative with a small "c". Their reaction to change of all kinds is remarkably similar. However, they are not natural allies. I have found in discussions with them that they come to such a person as myself with the precise nature of their complaints from opposite ends of the political and every other spectrum.
It is not surprising to find that the Labour party and the BMA do not always agree. They never have before. In response to an intervention from my hon. Friend the Member for Stockport (Mr. Favell), the hon. Member for Livingston implied that nowadays the BMA's views determined, Labour party policy. No doubt, the Bar Council will determine its policy on law reform, just as the Transport and General Workers Union will determine its policy on the dock labour scheme. It was never thus for the doctors. The BMA was nine to one against the foundation of the National Health Service. Aneurin Bevan did not follow the line of the hon. Member for Livingston.
In the mid-1970s, the disputes between the Labour Government and the BMA and the medical profession over private practice were described by a recent historian of the Health Service as being the most bitter in the entire history of the National Health Service. When Barbara Castle was opposed by all the medical organisations, I do not remember the Labour party saying that that settled the argument. It would not. Obviously, the Labour party's arguments do not now coincide with those of the doctors' organisations, and this unholy alliance will not hold together for too long.
So far the Labour party's campaign has been far less important to me and the public than that conducted by the BMA. The issue of so-called privatisation chosen by the hon. Member for Livingston has been a kind of barmy irrelevance to the actual issues to which the Labour party pledged itself. I believe that it is still pledging itself in by-elections to fight the privatisation of the National Health Service. That reminds me of an old story, which I will not relate at length, about the man in the railway compartment who had a device for keeping away elephants. He was sure it worked because no elephants got into his compartment. The Labour party is campaigning against the privatisation of the National Health Service. It will succeed. It is a noble campaign. It will sail on and meet no obstacles, because nobody has ever proposed privatising the Health Service. It is not threatened with privatisation. It is an irrelevant non-issue.
The campaign of the BMA—the doctors' campaign—to which the motion refers has been quite different. The hottest issue is obviously the question of the GPs' contract, coupled to some extent with the indicative drug budgets that we have described. The occasion of the debate is the present heat in relationships between the Government and parts of the BMA. It provoked the GPs' leaflet campaign

and it was the subject of last week's conference of local medical committees, which I am glad to say finally brought to an end all talk of a resignation from the Health Service —which struck me as an odd way to show one's commitment to the service—but still talked of sanctions, and of using non-co-operation with our reforms to improve the Health Service unless they had the sort of contract of remuneration that they wanted. I do riot believe that that is the view of every doctor.
It is important to sort out the GP contract. We have a debate on the White Paper coming up shortly, but the contract is the immediate issue. I believe that getting a better GP contract will have more effect on raising the quality of health care in this country than most of the other things we have attempted to do in the Health Service for a long time. That contract has been in the air for a long time, and it was clearly trailed in the primary health care Green Paper and subsequent White Paper. We have had long discussions about it.
I do not believe that anyone can be opposed to the idea of having a contract that is up to date and linked to hard work and good performance. We will pay more to the most hard-working GPs and we will set standards of service to patients for all our GPs. The policy of the contract is to build on the strength of British general practice and it is no threat to or attack on it.
Today, GPs, to whom I and the House are seeking to appeal, are better trained than their predecessors because general practice is now recognised as a specialty in its own right. There are more GPs than ever before—up from about 25,000 to about 30,000 during the lifetime of this Government. They have fewer patients each to look after than ever before, with average list sizes falling from 2,286 to 2,020 in England over the last 10 years, on average, a drop of 12 per cent. And they are better paid than ever before. This year's review body increase of 8 per cent. was the highest of any review body group and took their earnings increase 25 per cent. ahead of inflation since 1979.
I think that GPs should be paid well and my proposals are no threat to their average earnings—a suspicion to which I addressed myself forcefully only a few weeks ago. The total payment to GPs currently has been settled by the Government and I approve of it. The total payment out of the contract to the average GP is about £60,000 per annum, including all fees and allowances. The average salary element is set at £31,000, but that average includes part-timers, semi-retired and low-earning GPs. My published new contract proposals show how a GP with an average list could have his earnings potential raised from £43,000 to £47,000.
My proposals would increase the earning figures for the more hard-working GPs arid those who hit the targets. I am in favour of paying good GPs very well and I am entitled to say that the incurable suspicion that, somehow, we shall try to reduce those earnings is wrong. What I say to the House and to the doctors—I am sure that the public would agree—is that such earnings are justified for professional men, but they mean that the Government are entitled to specify the work load of doctors, to encourage new services to patients and to set standards of health promotion and disease prevention for which to aim. The contract should pay good rewards and, in return, should set out the high professional standards at which the hard-working professional men and women should aim.
We are not aiming for all GPs to have bigger lists—that is a mathematical impossibility—as the contract is


capitation-based now. We are aiming for new and better services for elderly patients. That is why one of our offers is to pay so much more to the doctor for each elderly patient that he takes on. The capitation for patients over 75 will go up sharply so long as the doctor maintains contact, at least once a year, with each old person. It is important to explain what we are discussing with the BMA. We aim for better medical supervision of our young people. That is why we are offering a new, generous payment to every doctor who introduces a surveillance system for the under-fives on his or her list.
I hope that we are all agreed that the NHS should keep up with the best international standards of immunisation, which represents disease prevention, and of female cancer screening, which also represents disease prevention. We pay all doctors for whatever immunisation and cervical cancer screening they do as they form part of the essential duties of any doctor nowadays. In my proposals I have suggested extra, new performance payments for those who attain the World Health Organisation target of vaccinating nine out of 10 children on their list. I do not believe that that is unrealistic as about 100 out of 190 district health authorities reached 90 per cent. target for diphtheria, tetanus and polio vaccinations in 1987–88. We are not talking about impossible targets, but we shall discuss the details to ensure that they are possible and reasonable for all subjects.
About 2,000 women are still dying needlessly every year of cervical cancer. That is why I have suggested that new rewards should be given to every GP who persuades eight out of 10 of the at-risk women on his list to have the smear test.
All these details can be discussed. Indeed, they have been discussed, and they can be further discussed. My negotiators and I have spent over 100 hours on matters such as rural practice allowances, basic practice allowances, payments for minor surgery and all the other details of the contract. Hon. Members on both sides of the House who have looked into the GPs' contract will, I hope, now study the Red Book and the mass of material which explains to the GP how to work the contract. I hope that they will also study the magazine Medeconomics which appears monthly and which serves no other purpose than to explain to GPs how to get the maximum return out of the contract.
I want to discuss the details yet again so that we can settle the terms of a contract that is up-to-date and rewards the best doctors, because the best doctors are doing this work. We all meet doctors who say, "We are delivering these services" and who will be content so long as the details are reasonable and reflect the realities of practice. We can reach agreement if there is good will, common sense and a commitment on both sides to a better Health Service.

Ms. Marjorie Mowlam: The Minister said in relation to cervical smears that women could choose quality clinical medical treatment. How does a woman, when faced with two doctors who are using different publicity, choose which one offers the best quality clinical treatment? There will be great advertising and excellent pictures, but the Minister must explain how a woman in

that situation—indeed, the same difficulty will face pensioners—will be in a position to choose the best quality clinical service.

Mr. Clarke: We are here talking about whether doctors carry out cervical smears and whether they carry out a positive drive to advise people of the benefits and so raise the level. If a woman is particularly interested in services for female patients, she might look at the literature to see, for example, whether what is usually called a well woman clinic is being offered by one practice rather than by another, because that is the type of health promotion session that the new contract would encourage.
Having dealt with the contract, I come to the hospital proposals. The concerns of the BMA are different. I by now have met many doctors. Indeed, I could not make up my mind when I last answered parliamentary questions whether I had met hundreds or thousands. Certainly the number must be well into four figures by now. Judging from the campaign that is being run, most hon. Members have met a lot of GPs. I trust that they have also met many consultants and junior doctors.
I believe—I defy anybody to challenge this—that it is clear from discussions with the hospitals that the great bulk of what we now propose is being accepted by hospital doctors, even though some of them still assert that they are against the White Paper as a whole. Most consultants, in my experience, approve of the whole idea of getting better financial management. That represents a transformation in opinion compared with my time as Minister for Health only four or five years ago.
Few consultants would now argue with the contention that it is ridiculous that the Health Service should be one of the last places to get up to date with modern information technology, to come to grips with the world of the computer, or to have any proper financial management system.
We recently extended what we call the resource management initiative to another 50 hospitals, and the 50 that we named had actually competed for the privilege of being put in the forefront of introducing financial management systems.
The profession is now almost wholly in favour of clinical audit. I have not met a doctor for some time who has been against it. That is almost a total reverse of the situation five or six years ago, when the Royal College of General Practitioners and the Royal College of Surgeons first tentatively began to go into this area. It was invented by the profession and I reassure the profession that it will continue to be professionally led because it is quality control by doctors, of doctors for the benefit of doctors and their patients.
I know few consultants who do not welcome the idea of what is usually described as the concept of money following the patient. My hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Kent has given me a perfect example of how doctors are fed up with the present system which does not tie the resources with where the work is done best and to where the patients are being referred. So the question of money going over administrative boundaries and the ending of the efficiency trap are welcomed by all doctors.
Doctors have reservations and questions; that is sensible. The White Paper is not a blueprint. My hon. and learned Friend the Minister of State says that it is not a tablet of stone. It is not intricately detailed. There is an enormous amount for discussion within it; that is why we


have eight working papers for discussion. The detail needs to be worked out with the service. People in the service want to know about planning. There are fears about a comprehensive service and about whether there will be fragmentation. When we debate the White Paper those fears can be answered. District health authorities will continue to have all the money they need. We are under a duty to provide a comprehensive service accessible to all patients. Health authorities will use their money to make sure that they plan where the service is best given to patients.
The profession wants to know about medical teaching and research, an extremely important and complex issue where the old arrangements needed improving anyway. We have to make sure that the training of our doctors and research are not adversely affected by the proposals. The same is true of nurse training. When I encounter consultants in the hospital service I find that they are suspicious to a certain extent of the new system of contracts. They are sometimes suspicious about the self-governing proposals and about the effect of GP practice budgets. They say that we are going too fast. They talk of the need for pilot schemes. They say that when new drugs are introduced they need to experiment.
All that has been picked up by the hon. Member for Livingston. I do not credit him with originality. In the press at the weekend he picked up a theme that has been put to me by the medical profession for the last month, but in a different way. He is interested in running pilots. I assume that he does not want to run pilots of things to which he is fundamentally opposed. Now he has come round to experimenting. As we need legislation before we can set up any of these things, he does not seem to want to rush to experiment because he does not want to legislate for a year or two. It might mean pilot schemes at two or three selected places and a multidisciplinary committee. We would spend years getting an agreed assessment. In the great tradition of that giant service, nothing would happen for a long time.
Consultants are interested in self-governing hospitals and GPs are interested in their own practice budgets. The hon. Member for Livingston is right to have his fears. Many doctors will react to our request for expressions of interest next month. Many of them will move forward with us. They are interested in how we will handle the changes and whether we are going too fast. I believe that we can meet the fears of plunging into the unknown. It is in the nature of our proposals on self-governing hospitals that we are asking who is interested. We shall work with willing volunteers where there is an adequate expression of interest.
There will be GP practice budgets only when GPs have said, "That is a good idea. You have satisfied me on the details. We have negotiated the basis of a contract that I am happy with." They they will go ahead. Before we have the first ones in place by April 1991 we shall have to work out the details. We shall discover much more about how to calculate a budget, about the structure of management needed in self-governing hospitals, and about care services, even after April 1991, depending on where we are. We shall run it on a fairly loose rein at first to get the system bedded in.
The question is, do Labour Members share the Government's aim for a better health service and improved management, and will they commit themselves to proceeding sensibly and purposefully in the right

direction, testing things, working out the details, and making sure that it goes smoothly? Or does the Labour party, as some people did at first, just say that it is "agin" it, that the Government are commercialising the service and that it is fundamentally opposed to it?
I will be fair to the hon. Member for Livingston; he has not done it today, but outside the debate has been reduced to a pathetically low level at various times. I have discussed keeping elephants out of the door by opposing privatisation. People have been told that the elderly will be turned away and that hospitals will concentrate on profitable lines, whatever that means. I went through a picket line in Glamorgan when I was late for a train. A chap ran after me and gave me a leaflet. I was told that I had gone past GPs. I do not know who most of them were. They were chanting, "People, not profits," whatever that meant.
The trouble with that level of campaigning is that, as will become clear when we reach the legislation and as we proceed, the BMA does not believe what is being said. It knows that the leaflets contain things that are not true. More importantly, the Labour party does not believe what is being said. It knows that it is not fighting a campaign for privatisation. The snag is that it has no proposals of its own to put forward. At the moment, it is trying to compound confusion for short-term political reasons.
I do not object to political exchanges, whether vigorous or less vigorous, but I strongly object when the Labour party, the hon. Member for Livingston and others doubt the sincere commitment of myself and the Conservative party to a better NHS. I and many of my hon. Friends have worked for years in stints at the Department of Health in order to secure the future of the NHS, which would decline if we adoped a do-nothing option and decided to let it stand still.
The Government have spent more and done more for the NHS than any other Government in the previous two decades. We have presided over the growth of the service, the widespread introduction of new high-tech services and the particularly rapid spread of community-based care and better services for the elderly. We began the introduction of better modern management and we shall continue that.
The Labour party's claims for its commitment are based on the ancient history of two generations ago. Our claims are based on our recent achievements and, above all, on our vision of reforms which will make the NHS better still for future generations of patients and will give us a Health Service which, as a result of the Government's efforts, we shall be proud of in 40 years' time, just as we have been proud of it over the past 40 years.

Mr. Michael Foot: When the Secretary of State said at the end of his speech that what he resented was that anybody should question the allegiance of himself and his party to the National Health Service, I say to him right at the start that if he had been present in 1948, as I was, when the service was introduced, he would have known that the Opposition's suspicions were based on a great foundation.
The Conservative party made a great effort to stop the NHS, on its present comprehensive basis, from ever being introduced. That is why it put down reasoned amendments against Second and Third Readings. I know that the right hon. and learned Gentleman has said that his party was


wrong on that occasion—I am happy that he should own up now—but he must not suspect our suspicions when we look back upon that record.
The Secretary of State also referred today—he called it a Freudian slip, but it might be much more of a Freudian landslide—to the British Medical opposition. That is what he is up against, and he must not complain if on some matters the Opposition happen to agree with the British Medical opposition's opposition to his measures.
I hope that this is not too parochial a reference to my constituency, but nothing is resented more in my constituency of Blaenau Gwent, or Ebbw Vale as it was, by the representatives of the medical profession than that the right hon. and learned Gentleman should in some way claim that his quarrels with the British Medical opposition, or the medical professions in their different forms, is in some way comparable to what Aneurin Bevan faced when the service was introduced.
One of the main reasons why doctors, or many sections of the doctors—not all of them by any means—opposed the introduction of the scheme was that they said that it would interfere with their clinical freedom. Large numbers of general practitioners and their leaders in the BMA genuinely believed that right up to the moment when the Health Service was brought into being, as I can confirm. At that moment, the transformation took place and the doctors discovered that they had far more genuine clinical freedom, particularly when dealing with poor people, than ever before. The vast majority of the medical profession welcomed the change as the greatest they had seen in the history of the country. Most of them hold to that same view now.
Therefore, the Secretary of State cannot claim for a moment that his arguments are anything like the same as those that Aneurin Bevan had with the medical profession. At that time it was not easy to get the service comprehensively established, because it had been divided in such different ways. To achieve anything which could properly be termed a National Health Service necessitated detailed consultations with the British Medical Association and other sections.
A few moments ago the Secretary of State spoke as if the medical profession were contained in one body. However, there is a variety of bodies, and if the right hon. and learned Gentleman knew anything about this, he would know that the royal colleges have always taken different approaches. If it had not been for the detailed consultations between Aneurin Bevan and the royal colleges, particularly the leaders of the Royal College of Physicians, there would never have been a National Health Service.
The difference between Aneurin Bevan's Government and this Government is that his did not take orders from the medical profession. Aneurin Bevan always said that supremacy should lie with the House, but he consulted members of the profession. The shape of the National Health Service was powerfully affected by the discussions that he had with the heads of the royal colleges.
The Government have done some terribly foolish things in relation to health. They have done nothing more foolish than slamming the door on the heads of the royal colleges

not so many months ago. They did so over the contract but, even worse, they did not consult the colleges about their plans for the future. Why not?
The origin of the troubles that the Government and the country face over the National Health Service, which the Opposition want to protect and for which it has every right to fight, was the Prime Minister's decision to set up a review body—a Cabinet committee—under her chairmanship to investigate the Health Service. No one was stronger than Aneurin Bevan in saying that the service should be reviewed. Almost every Act introduced by the Government in which he served contained a clause stating that the service should be reviewed after five years, or some period, so that the people working in it and the patients dependent on it could take a fresh look at it. He was not dogmatic enough to say that it should stay the same for ever.
Aneurin Bevan would never have agreed to a Cabinet Committee that was presided over by a Prime Minister, even one that favoured the Health Service, which the present one does not. Even if the Prime Minister passionately supported it, it would not be satisfactory for an investigation to be carried out by a Cabinet committee with the Prime Minister able to carry through anything she wanted and to get rid of Cabinet Ministers who did not do as she wanted, almost as easily as if they were health managers.
The Secretary of State is a very clever fellow, although not quite as clever as he sometimes claims. However, I give him full credit for his quality compared to that of many of his comrades and companions in the Cabinet. When he accepted his job, his ambition exceeded his intelligence and he has to live with the consequences. Unfortunately, so do we. Unless we can cut it down, he will suffer to his dying day from the albatross round his neck, which is that he was prepared, in that Cabinet committee, to accept the formal investigation into the most precious of the country's national institutions, accept its terms and recommend them to the country. Even the right hon. and learned Gentleman can hardly stomach some of the terms, such as the special arrangements for BUPA patients, although he defends them.
I suppose that most of the leakages on these subjects come direct from the right hon. and learned Gentleman. The story is that he opposed the proposals right up to the end, but then swallowed his pride. That is the price of keeping his job. He has made his biggest political mistake and, unfortunately, we have to suffer for it.
I am sure that, when he has the chance, my hon. Friend the Member for Livingston (Mr. Cook) will carry out a proper overhaul and investigation of the National Health Service. That must take place, and the intelligent way to do so would be to have consultations before decisions are taken, not afterwards. If that had happened, even with these proposals, if they had not been handed down by the Prime Minister, there might have been some chance of decent consultations. However, nobody knows better than the Secretary of State how narrow the ground is for any possible negotiations. That is an affront to everyone who works in the Health Service, whether representatives of trade unions, about whom the right hon. and learned Gentleman is so rude, or representatives of the general practitioners. The right hon. and learned Gentleman is capable of offending GPs about their medical and monetary habits, when he is in a tight corner in negotiations. The presidents of the royal colleges, who


represent some of the greatest traditions in this country, were never once consulted before decisions were made about these major questions on how the service which they did so much to build should operate in the future.
Doctors from my constituency, like many others throughout the country, have been to fake discussions and consultations held by the Secretary of State or by his Ministers, I was affronted by the one that took place on 20 April in Bristol, to which representatives from south Wales went to have discussions with the Secretary of State. After he had made his speech and after a few minutes of discussion, the media were turned out so that other discussions could be held. The Secretary of State did not allow the opportunity for other views to be put to him and many of those who went to the meeting went away affronted by the manner in which matters were discussed and debated, quite apart from their reactions to the proposals.
If the Secretary of State questions what I say, I can give him detailed evidence. I shall not go through every aspect of the objections, but I shall mention those relating to the major matters to which the right hon. and learned Gentleman referred. One of the leading doctors in my constituency went to the consultation meeting. It was the first chance that he and his representatives had had to speak about the proposal, which is now supposed to go through. I shall mention one of his objections from a list of almost equally valid objections: his criticism of the way in which the Government presented their proposals.
When the Secretary of State gets into such a ferocious rhetorical state about the propaganda spread by the BMA, he should he more careful, because he must be spending hundreds of millions of pounds of taxpayers' money on putting his case. The BMA, for probably the first time in history, is using an advertising agent to assist it in putting its case. I dare say the Government will soon introduce a law under which only Government Ministers will be allowed to use advertising agencies to present their case. I dare say that Lord Young, who often co-operated eagerly with the right hon. and learned Gentleman, would be happy to draw up a suitable piece of legislation that could be rushed through to ensure that only the Government have the chance to put their case, and if any other group tried to hit back it would be pilloried and attacked, as the right hon. and learned Gentleman has done so offensively on other occasions.
Doctors in my constituency, and I am sure many others, are asking something that goes to the central principle of the Health Service. The right and learned Gentleman's arguments about the numbers involved in the work in the years ahead will not affect this argument. The doctor said:
I think it is morally wrong to claim that the Service will be free at the point of first contact when some GPs will in effect be controlling waiting lists. It would have been more honest for Government to have encouraged these Practices to present private services altogether rather than continue the pretence of the scheme representing NHS principles.
Believe me, after the tuition of 30 or 40 years, doctors in my constituency—and, I would say, in most other parts of the country—understand the principles of the NHS very much better than the Prime Minister who presided over the committee that produced these proposals. The right hon. Lady has never understood those principles. Her idea is to kill Socialism, and I am sure that right up to 1979—or 1983, or perhaps 1987—she regarded the NHS as part of Socialism. It would be strange if she did not, because the

NHS is the greatest and most obvious Socialist institution in the country and is based on Socialist principles. The Prime Minister cannot kill Socialism without killing off the National Health Service.
Of course, it would be very difficult to kill it off with a single blow or indeed a series of blows, even with such a skilful practitioner as the Secretary of State to do the Prime Minister's dirty work for her. The Government must go about it in a rather different way. I do not respect the good faith of the Secretary of State in these matters, but I know that some Conservative Members, and many doctors who are certainly not Labour party supporters, support the NHS and believe that its principles must be upheld over and above any competing principles about private profit, the market and so forth. That is what I mean by believing in the Health Service.
Many inroads have been made into the NHS as it was first introduced in 1948, and I acknowledge that they have been made by Labour as well as Conservative Governments; but we are now witnessing a much more serious, dangerous and long-term attack on the NHS than we have ever seen before. In case anyone doubts what I say or thinks that I am overstating this aspect of our deep-seated suspicions about the Government's motives, let me quote what was said by the medical correspondent of The Independent a day or two after the publication of the Secretary of State's proposals:
In the week since the NHS White Paper was published, the most revealing comment about it has been an aside from David Willetts, formerly the Prime Minister's health care adviser in the Downing Street policy unit and now director of the Centre for Policy Studies, the right-wing think-tank Mrs. Thatcher helped to found.
No doubt the Secretary of State is familiar with those bodies: indeed, he may be familiar with David Willetts himself.
Mr. Willetts, the closest of the 'outsiders' to the NHS review, said he had asked a senior civil servant what he would do to the NHS if he were the minister. The reply was, 'I'd either leave it entirely alone, because it is too politically dangerous. Or I'd destabilise it, and see what happened.—'
That is what the right hon. and learned Gentleman is doing with the backing of the Prime Minister, and that is why we believe that this attack will shape many other aspects of social policy in the years to come.
My hon. Friend the Member for Livingston has led the battle with such skill, knowledge, understanding and hard work that we will accept no insults that may be levelled at him by the Secretary of State. I am sure that the right hon. and learned Gentleman will wish to withdraw the few extra insults that he threw out today. My hon. Friend has led the battle to protect the service with constructive zeal, and we are still determined to protect it. We know that it needs much more money to be made better for the future; but, although that is by far the most important aspect, there are many others.
The improvement of the NHS must be achieved by a Government who believe in the democratic Socialist principles of the service. The Prime Minister does not believe in them, and if the Secretary of State says that he does he will not stay in his job for long. We would find reasons to rejoice at that, and others not to do so.
My hon. Friend has made a generous proposal to the Government. If it were merely a matter of political opportunism—those are the Secretary of State's words, not mine—the best thing for the Labour party would be for the fight to go ahead until we could play it as one of our main cards in the next election. My hon. Friend, on behalf


of the Labour party, has proposed that the issue be kicked out until after the next election: that we should have a vote about it. That is a fair offer, and if it is rejected that rejection will expose all the more the malice—the malignity —that the Prime Minister and her aides have brought to this great subject.

Dame Elaine Kellett-Bowman: I shall not detain the House for long. I wish to make three points.
I wish first to comment on the disreputable £7 million advertising campaign being run by the British Medical Association. Like many of my hon. Friends, I actually enjoy receiving letters from constituents, but I have been horrified by the number of letters that I have received from elderly patients, many of them in old people's homes, who have been worried stiff by the BMA's untruthful pamphlet. They have been led to believe that they will not obtain the treatment or—if it is near the end of the financial year —the drugs that they need. The BMA knows perfectly well that both those things are untrue.
Even worse, one 84-year-old was informed by his doctor that if the Government's proposals went through he would no longer be able to visit him at home in an isolated rural area. I should dearly like to know the name of his doctor. Despite all that, however, I continue to believe that locally we are very fortunate in our GPs, and that they have merely been misled by the BMA and are supporting what is, after all, their trade union.
I have responded meticulously, point by point, to every point that a doctor has made to me. I assured doctors that this was a consultative document and that I would forward all their letters and comments to the Secretary of State as part of the consultation process, which I have done. I said that I would seek answers to points which were unclear or which worried them, with a view to having them modified —as usually happens during a consultation period—or deleted altogether, as the case might be.
That was until Thursday. On Thursday I received a letter from a local GP. The final paragraph read as follows:
Some doctors select the compliant patients by being so unpleasant that the others leave the list, and join the list of a softer doctor.
Those are not my words; they are the words of a local GP.
That letter came as a considerable shock to me, because I have always viewed our local doctors—delightful men—through rose-coloured spectacles, and have argued that what the Government were trying to do was bring other areas up to the standard of those in my part of the world.
No doubt the unpleasant doctors mentioned by their colleague are not typical, but even one such doctor is one too many, and shows that reform is necessary for the patients' sake. Fortunately for the excellent reputations of our local hospitals and the vast majority of our local GPs, on the very day that I received that disturbing letter the North-West regional health authority issued a report by its top medical experts showing that the expectation of life in Lancashire and Greater Manchester was two years below the national average—except in Lancaster, where it is above the national average. That rather proves the point that I was making all along to doctors and constituents alike—that the NHS is patchy and uneven. When the BMA and the Royal College of Nursing talk of destroying

the comprehensive nature of the NHS, they are talking of a myth. The aim of the Government is to make sure that a comprehensive service, nationally funded, exists everywhere, and that people obtain decent treatment wherever they live.
It is said that things go in threes. On Thursday the BMA held its conference to decide its attitude to the proposals. As one GP representative put it, the BMA attitude is hardening. Really? When did the BMA not oppose change? It opposed it when Lloyd George tried to reform health care in 1911; it opposed the White Paper in 1943; it opposed the introduction of the NHS in 1946–48 until—as the predecessor of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Blaenau Gwent (Mr. Foot), Aneurin Bevan, put it—its mouth was stuffed with gold; and it opposed the changes in the contract in 1966, changes it is now defending tooth and nail.
I have news for the BMA delegate to whom I have referred: if the BMA attitude is hardening, so is the attitude of myself and my hon. Friends, with every letter that we receive from sick and elderly constituents, people who are frightened, misled and confused by the BMA pamphlets. We do not expect that sort of unprofessional conduct from the delightful and courteous men whom, until now, we have liked and respected. If there be any will to resume the protracted negotiations on conditions of service, all very well. If not, so be it. I advise the Secretary of State to press on with his reforms. The patients need them, and we shall support them.

Mr. Archy Kirkwood: I believe that the official Opposition's motion left the Labour party wide open to exactly the kind of counter attack launched by the Secretary of State. It is wrong headed at this stage to concentrate simply on the terms of the general practitioners' contract and doctors' opposition. Such a move allows the Government to argue that the doctors are just another special interest group and that they are only concerned about their own wallets. Such an approach diminishes the importance of all the other professional and consumer groups, legion in number, who oppose the Government's proposals.
The range of dissent and the depth of feeling of opposition to the White Paper argue powerfully for the widespread mobilisation of public opinion against these proposals. The motion tabled by the Labour party has potentially minimised the opposition of Conservative Back Benchers and the possibility of getting a response from them to the position in which they find themselves. I get the impression that they are under a lot of pressure from their constituents. Therefore, I believe that an Adjournment motion would have produced a much more instructive and constructive debate.
The Secretary of State announced that a full debate will be held on the White Paper. It would be helpful to know when that might happen. It will be an important debate in Government time, and I look forward to it being held.
The Government's proposals relating to the NHS are ill thought out. No firm long-term commitment has been made to increase funding year by year. I understood the Secretary of State to say that he had won a 5 per cent. real increase at the battle with the Treasury last autumn. If that is correct and if the Secretary of State is saying that, over time, the Health Service can expect that sort of real terms


increase in funding under his custodianship, many of the generally held fears will be assuaged. Of course, there is always the question whether Government statements can be trusted.
The very effective speech of the right hon. Member for Blaenau Gwent (Mr. Foot) underscored the fact that part of the problem has really arisen because of a lack of consultation. The Government engaged in an internal review. There was no consultation or empirical research. No evidence was submitted and studied. That situation weakens fundamentally the strength of the case that the Government are trying to argue.
The Secretary of State cannot so readily rubbish the idea of pilot projects. In the autumn, there will be a report on the resources management initiatives that have been in process. Why do we not wait at least until we have the preliminary findings, although even then it may take some further time to establish exactly what has been achieved in those projects? I am aware that another 50 or so are due to commence and they will also take further time to assess. There is no reason for this degree of haste; the pilot projects should first of all be studied carefully, before decisions are made. The time allowed to introduce the plans is totally inadequate, and is a recipe for confusion and disaster. There is no guarantee of resources even to manage the introduction of the reforms—a substantial problem which the service will have to face. In the present situation there is considerable uncertainty and confusion. The response of the Secretary of State is simply to try to bully people into line. That is not a proper or responsible way to behave. The only major effect achieved is to lower morale of staff when they are trying their best to deliver the best service they can.
The proposals in the White Paper are undoubtedly fundamental and far reaching, irrespective of whether one thinks they are right or wrong. Given their importance, the changes should have been introduced much more carefully and thoughtfully. I believe that the debate should really be about the future of primary health care. The Government seem motivated by a desire to create a mechanism that will limit costs. I have a fear, and it is essentially the same fear as that which GPs raised when the NHS was first introduced. They fear now as they did then that limitations on cost will restrict clinical judgment. GPs are right to be afraid, because, given the lack of detail in front of us, that limitation is still a real prospect.
An inevitable result of the present proposals would be doctors spending less time with patients. I cannot see how the Secretary of State can argue otherwise. Less time would be spent on meaningful preventive medicine. I listened carefuly to the Secretary of State's comments about Government targets, statistics and so on. However, meaningful preventive medicine depends on the general practitioner spending sufficient time with individual patients to deal with their requirements. As a result of the Government's proposals, there is certainly a prospect of a fundamental erosion of services provided in rural areas. The Secretary of State has not satisfied the profession that such services would not be eroded.
As a Scottish Member, I realise that some improvements have been made in the Scottish contract. I hope that, as far as possible, those improvements will be made in the English contract, built upon and taken forward. However, in general, doctors are still apprehensive that they are

being asked to take a fundamental structural step in an unquantified way in an unknown direction, with the real prospect of damage to their patients as a direct result.
I want to ask some questions that I hope will clear up uncertainties that currently exist in the minds of medical professionals. If the Secretary of State has set up a new organisation known as the British medical opposition, I would certainly like to be a founder member; I will join up this afternoon. Has the Secretary of State considered alternative models to deliver primary care? I refer him to an article published on 15 April in the British Medical Journal by Professor David Morrell, a professor of general practice. He outlines a detailed role for general practice and a contract that would make far more sense. He talks about the need for an increased basic practice allowance. His scheme would also involve annual reports by the GP practices to the family practitioner committee or the area health board, and regular visits by audit committees. I do not have time to go into his proposals in great detail, but general practitioners in my area have told me that it would be a sensible alternative, would lead to the attainment of many of the Government's objectives and would exclude all the objectionable features of the present plans.
It is important that we should hear what the Government have to say about care in the community for the elderly, the mentally handicapped and the mentally ill. What will be the administrative cost of setting up and maintaining the new system? Will the medical audit be adequately funded? The Government studiously avoided making a positive response to the exchanges on that subject in the other place. What will be the career structure for part-time doctors, particularly part-time women doctors? The Government have made no headway on that fundamental question. According to most informed commentators, the basic practice allowance and the group practice allowance are on the way out. That would have a fundemental effect on the career prospects of part-time doctors, particularly part-time women doctors.
The objective is to achieve greater choice for the patient. How will that be possible if a district health authority has a contract with a hospital to provide services and if a general practitioner has not opted to take control of his own budget, and therefore does not have money to send with the patient to that hospital? What will happen if that general practitioner wants to refer a patient to a hospital that has not entered into a contract with the district health authority? Frequently, there are valid reasons for referring the patient to a hospital outwith the district health authority for specialist treatment, or for other reasons. Can the Secretary of State guarantee that such a referral would still be permitted under the new proposals? That question is causing great concern and anxiety to general practitioners and patients in my area and others.
If implemented, the White Paper proposals will change fundamentally the National Health Service. It will be changed almost beyond recognition. The old ideas of consensus and co-operation will be overtaken by competition and cost-cutting, with the result that the standards of care for the elderly and the chronically sick will fall and the administrative and treatment costs for everybody else will rise. The Government should think again.

Mr. Jonathan Aitken: I agree with the hon. Member for Roxburgh and Berwickshire (Mr. Kirkwood) that the terms of the motion are tactically ill-judged. We have witnessed this afternoon a delightful irony of political history. The House was treated to the spectacle of the Labour party leaping uninhibitedly on the BMA's bandwagon.
The hon. Member for Livingston (Mr. Cook) said that it is not true that doctors always oppose change in the National Health Service. I thought I saw the right hon. Member for Blaenau Gwent (Mr. Foot) respond to that statement with a nervous twitch. It seemed to stir him into doing his best to paper over the cracks of Labour party history. He said that the doctors had responded quite favourably in the end to the Bevan reports and that we should not be surprised that the Labour party agrees with the BMA. However, that is not what the right hon. Gentleman said in his book.
By chance, to amuse myself on bank holiday Monday, I dipped into his majestic biography of Nye Bevan. On page 103, I discovered his description of exactly what was the mood of the doctors as the NHS reforms were introduced—reforms that the BMA opposed as implacably as it defends the status quo today. The right hon. Gentleman said:
Much the strongest bent in the medical mind was a non-political conservatism, a revulsion against all change, a habit of intellectual isolation which enabled them to magnify any proposals for reform into a totalitarian nightmare.
I find an echo or two of those words in today's BMA campaign and an echo or two in the speech of the hon. Member for Livingston.
Conservative Members do not need to disparage the word "conservatism"—the fact that the medical profession is traditionally a conservative profession. That is natural. General practitioners have much to be proud of in the way that they carry out their duties. Our delicate task in the debate is to try to make a judgment on what parts of the general practitioner's world within the NHS should be preserved and what parts should be altered by the reforms. That is the judgment that we have to make on the White Paper and the supporting documents.
There are plenty of good ideas in the White Paper for both doctors and patients, which I strongly support. The medical audit proposals are excellent. The notion of a peer review is supported by many thoughtful doctors. I believe that the perhaps more controversial proposals on indicative or guideline drug budgets for doctors should be welcomed.
We have heard yet again the BMA's traditional trumpet call sounding the alarm that any such proposals will destroy doctors' clinical freedom to prescribe. Those arguments were shown to be ill-founded at the time of the limited list controversy in 1985. They are even more ill-founded today, in the light of that experience. I recall supporting my right hon. and learned Friend in his previous incarnation as Minister of State. He put up with all kinds of attacks when he introduced the limited list. What was the result when the dust settled? [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Peckham (Ms. Harman) says that he amended it. I hope that all political debates and consultation papers will lead to amendments. The accusations that were levelled against my right hon. and learned Friend were totally unjustified. When the dust had settled, £75 million had been saved from the nation's drug

budget and diverted to better patient care. Moreover, the notion that clinical freedom was threatened or would be destroyed proved to be a complete nonsense. It has not been affected at all.
In a world where resources are finite and the demand for medicine is infinite, there can no longer be any absolute prescribing freedoms. We should welcome the guideline drug budgets for doctors as a non-compulsory yardstick of measurement, particularly since the yardstick can be moved after dialogue with the family practitioner committees and after peer review.
Having commended certain parts of the White Paper, may I also express a few misgivings about the sections that deal with the future management of general practice. My real concern is whether the proposals will actually work and whether they are based on the right principles. I must confess that I am a little worried that there may be some fundamental flaws at the heart of the management proposals for general practitioners. Above all, I fear that the White Paper's ideology of free market forces and the untried innovations that flow from that ideology may not satisfactorily be transplanted to the traditional and caring body politic of general practice—at least, not without some hideous practical difficulties.
The first flaw I detect in the White Paper is the impression it gives that all these sweeping management reforms are necessary because general practitioners go about their duties in a way that is inefficient and expensive. If that is Whitehall's view, it is not a view that is widely shared by patients at the grass roots; nor does it seem to be justified by the available statistics. As far as I can discover, Britain's doctors—as gatekeepers of the NHS —operate one of the cheaper and more effective primary health care systems in the Western world. Medical salaries here are pinned down to less than half the levels that exist in some European countries and in the USA. NHS administrative costs are low, at 4·5 per cent. of the total, compared with administrative costs of 21 per cent. of the total in America's competitive, free market medical system.
One part of the Government's reforms that perplexes me concerning their call for greater business efficiency and consumer choice is the starting point of the grievance that doctors are inefficient. Of course there are some bad doctors; there are a few bad apples in any profession. There are some 9 to 5 spirits who seem to have forgotten their vocation. However, on the whole the evidence suggests that there is widespread patient satisfaction with general practitioner services in this country, and I find it curious that a White Paper which is championing consumer demand in medicine should provide no evidence of consumer demand for reforms of general practice.
As I see it, the whole key to the philosophy of this White Paper towards the doctors is summed up in a sentence on page 48:
The practices which attract the most custom will attract the most money.
That sounds good as a fly-by-night economics textbook sentence published by the university of Chicago business school but, coming down to our own National Health Service, what it means is that the ultimate reward for improved efficiency and improved advertising is that market forces will send successful doctors a longer list of patients from which the doctors can earn higher and higher capitation fees and augment their incomes still


further by the performance bonus rule which allows them to retain in their practices 50 per cent. of the savings they make from their budgets.
We should not try to pretend that such proposals are anything other than a very radical reform. After all, they go against the trend of general practitioners trying to keep small lists, as they have been for some years now. It seems to be a decisive shift away from dear old "Dr. Finlay's Casebook," as super-doc comes to the supermarket with these sorts of ideas. Will the reforms work, and if they do, will they damage, as some doctors fear, the fundamental basis of doctor-patient relationships or the established collegiate basis of doctor-to-doctor relationships?
These reforms may work in certain prosperous surburban or metropolitan areas such as parts of the home counties or the city of Westminster, where the residential community consists largely of youngish people of working age, who may well be content with the brusque "Wham barn, thank you, doctor, for getting me back on my feet as quickly as possible" approach, because on the whole that approach to medicine will be quite popular with the age and social group likely to suffer only from short bursts of illness.
However, consider for a moment a completely different kind of community. I take the town of Ramsgate from my own constituency, which is a seaside town with a population of whom 38 per cent. are pensioners and which has the biggest department of social security office in south-east England, with 16,000 people on benefit. It has a particularly high concentration of disabled, disadvantaged, geriatric, chronically sick and mentally handicapped people. In short, doctors there deal with a lot of patients who need time and care. I do not see, in the words of the White Paper, many pluses for elderly and deprived patients in that sort of community, for many of whom the language of consumer choice in general practice might just as well be Mandarin Chinese. They want guidance, not the ability to make yuppy-type consumer choice decisions.

Mr. Sydney Bidwell: What would the hon. Gentleman say to a constituent who came to see me on Friday to say that, after false diagnosis, his wife needed pretty urgent surgery to the nose after many months of distress? She went to Ealing hospital as a result and was told that she would still have to wait many weeks before the operation could take place, but if he could afford £1,000 it could be carried out next week. What does the White Paper do in this regard?

Mr. Aitken: The hon. Member tries to tempt me into completely different areas from those which are the subject of this debate, and I must resist that temptation other than to express sympathy with his constituent. Whether it is his constituent or my constituent with a problem, I want to emphasise that I am not talking about so-called bad doctors or inefficient practices.
I know a practice in Ramsgate which lives up to and exceeds many of the standards set by the Government in the working papers. Its child immunisation rates are in excess of the Government's target of 90 per cent.; its drug bill is 23 per cent. below the average for the area; it operates minor surgery sessions; it holds preventive medicine clinics; it is computerised, with modern capability and enjoys a good professional and popular reputation. It is just the sort of practice which should

benefit from the White Paper proposals, and yet the doctors in that practice regard the Government's management and budgetary ideas and target payment schemes in particular with feelings close to horror. Why do they have those very strong feelings? The answer is that they believe—and I think they are right, with 12 per cent. of their patients over 75 and another 33 per cent. over 65 —that they are serving the kind of community which can best be looked after by the gentler culture of traditional general practice, with all its occasional necessary time-wasting delays and pauses for counselling and sympathy which a caring service involves, rather than the harsher disciplines of competitive, doctor—versus—doctor consumer choice, free market medicine portrayed in the White Paper.
I do not want to fall into the trap which the Labour party has fallen into of knocking everything in the White Paper on the curious principle that any stigma will do to beat a dogma, but there should be more flexibility in some of the Government's proposals. I could not find much indication of that vital ingredient in the White Paper, but I was glad to hear in some of the things my right hon. and learned Friend was saying today, and indeed in the tone of some of the recent press statements and working papers, that a gentler and more flexible note may now be injected into some of these proposals as they affect doctors.
Can I follow the point made by the hon. Member for Ealing, Southall (Mr. Bidwell) in supporting his call to the Minister to pay some attention to that profound article by Professor David Morell in a recent edition of the British Medical Journal? His point, as I understood it, was that the Government could get everything they wanted, but the foundation stone for the new contract should not be so much free market forces as the ideal that a medical practice serves the community in which it is based and that the standard of service by doctors to a community could be defined, graded and rewarded not by competitive forces within that community but by an annual audit carried out under the supervision of the area family practitioner committee. There was a great deal of merit in that proposal.
Finally, whether we are talking about Professor Morell's ideas or the Government's more radical proposals, when tackling this subject of reforming general practice a little humility and caution is essential. We are getting into deep and uncharted waters. I was sorry to hear the Secretary of State sound a little disparaging as he brushed aside any suggestion that pilot schemes might be workable. It is always bad news when the Labour party has a good idea, but the pilot scheme has something to commend it, because rural, coastal, inner city, suburban and metropolitan areas all have their different problems, and a different programme of pilot schemes in each one to see how some of these ideas work would be sensible.
The decent, diligent family doctor is part of the culture of Britain, part of the fabric of our society, and on the whole general practitioners have served their communities well. They rightly enjoy a far higher level of popularity and respect than a great many other professionals including, I might say, politicians. Maybe some general practitioners do need a bit of a shake-up and many of them would accept the best of the Government's new ideas and agree that the White Paper does give a useful nudge towards some welcome changes, but let us proceed by evolution rather than by revolution and let us have more time,


collaboration and path-finding by pilot schemes, because that is the way of accomplishing what the Secretary of State and all his supporters wish to achieve.

Mr. Ron Leighton: The Secretary of State has had the unique distinction of uniting the whole of the medical world including all the royal colleges, against himself. I see today that he also has the opposition of the community health councils, who found the issuing of his White Paper
'objectionable', the proposals 'drastic' and the time scale 'unacceptably hasty'.
and are
asking him to suspend implementation of these 'undesirable' and 'impractical' plans.
Today, we are discussing the views of the doctors. In preparation for the debate I conducted a survey of all the doctors in my constituency. They voted 47 against the Secretary of State's proposals and only three in favour. I asked them for any further comments and I received a huge sheaf of impassioned correspondence which I should be only too pleased to allow the Secretary of State to inspect.
I should like to read a small selection of the comments that I received, to which I hope the Secretary of State will pay attention. Dr. Spalding wrote:
I am disturbed by the proposals of the Government's White Paper on the National Health Service. I see them as doing great harm to general practice. I have been in practice in Manor Park for 25 years and retire in one week and so I have no vested interest either way.
The White Paper is pervaded by a materialistic attitude to medicine. Money matters but it should not be the only ruler. Interestingly, this attitude is revealed in the White Paper by the use of the word 'Consumer', where Patient is meant … I am afraid that if its ideas are enacted, the patient will indeed become merely a consumer.
Dr. Patel said:
No, the new proposals won't help the NHS, they will destroy it. Please ask the Government whether the advisers on the new proposals are full-time NHS doctors or economists? The new proposals will destroy the doctor and patient relationship. There would be a two tier fragmented Health Service.
Dr. Phillips said:
Medicine is not a business and should never be run entirely on that basis. In general practice it would not improve patient care. Extra administration would be necessary—there is already too much. If the Government expects us to be capable of running the practice on a financial level, and negotiate with hospitals, etc. we should be considered capable of running the internal affairs of our practices without outside pressure and interference.
Dr. Kapur said:
the opting out of hospitals, the buying of hospital facilities by Family Practitioner Committees, the restrictions on the GPs' budget and referral rights; the increased (60 per cent.) payment on number of patients—all these factors plus many others will lead to a deterioration of morale, and to two levels of NHS care.
Dr. Graham wrote:
In my opinion the new contract introduces increased bureaucracy causing a greater distance between doctors and patients and distrust. As a course organiser I am alarmed that the Government are demanding 20 hours in surgery per week as I spend two or more sessions a week in Newham General Hospital teaching post-graduates. When I see a patient who looks ill I cannot tell whether he has influenza needing rest, food poisoning or acute leukaemia where a bone marrow transplant costs £220,000. It is only detailed hospital tests that

will eventually uncover the truth, by which time the patient is out of my control. He would not want a GP coming to Hospital behind his back to consult with the specialist and possibly saying, 'Our practice cannot afford this treatment in future this year'.".
Dr. David Keable-Elliot said:
The Government's proposed health service changes will seriously damage patient care and risk trust between doctor and patient. For the first time, general practitioner services are to be cash limited. This means a possible rationing of the care we provide each year. We are to be offered financial incentives to save on the cost of patient care. … We are to be offered rewards not to treat patients, or to delay their care whether this be arranging hospital tests, giving treatment or referring patients to a specialist for a possible operation. We are to be encouraged to arrange for patients to go to the cheapest hospital, perhaps not the best, the nearest or the one with the shortest waiting list. The Government want GPs to become 'rationers' of health care and thus take the blame for chronic underfunding of the NHS. Once that happens, our concern is that we will be blamed for the service's failures and that will then be used as an excuse to force further changes which will finally end the health service as we know it. We are not prepared to risk the trust and confidence our patients have in us. How long will that trust last when they know we have an incentive not to act in their best interest?
Dr. Mahendran wrote:
Budget or cost cutting on an open ended comprehensive service such as the NHS is unacceptable. An unlimited number of patients under a doctor will mean no time for patients who deserve more time and attention. Chronically ill, disabled and patients requiring multiple therapy will lose out from this White Paper. If Regional Hospitals opt out the patients will have to travel to distant hospitals to obtain basic specialist attention or hospitalised care. This cannot mean that patients have greater choice. Even if Doctors' surgeries remain prudent and minimise costs, what guarantee is there that the money allocated for the subsesquent years will match the needs and inflationary increases?
He adds the postscript:
In the entire discussion Kenneth Clarke sounds as if the NHS is a wasteful and inefficient service. Does he not realise that throughout the world there is no parallel to the effective, comprehensive health service provided by the NHS taking into account the total cost incurred?
The hon. Member for Thanet, South (Mr. Aitken) also raised that point.
Dr. Dubai said:
As budget holders we would be asked to offer our patients treatment influenced more by the cost than the needs of the patient. I have two patients with kidney transplants and a third on a waiting list for a kidney transplant. Each time I write medicine for these patients, as recommended by the hospital to stop transplant rejection it costs over £100. I also have several elderly patients with multiple diseases and disabilities which demand a lot of time, energy and social support. If I am to be a budget holder I would have to think seriously about keeping these patients on my list as I would not have the time or money to look after these patients—even if I tried hard. I would have to refer the patient to the cheapest hospital and look for the cheapest drug to treat them—the so-called 'shop around'. I do not believe that a patient who has paid his national Insurance and his 'dues' should be offered a second class treatment. If the Government cannot afford the National Health Service they should tell the people and patients, rather than hide behind the doctors and get their objectives done by forcing the doctors to do that for them.
He goes on to praise group practice and says that he had thought that the Government favoured it. He adds:
By abolishing Group Practice allowance there will be a disincentive to form group practices with the resultant fall in the standard of patient care.
Dr. Bapna wanted me to tell the Government that
Doctors are not running a shop, they are doing what is best for their patients.
Dr. Patel asked:


How can a doctor give more time and do all the preventative work by increasing the size of the list?
I hope that the Secretary of State is paying close attention to the views of doctors in my constituency. Dr. Lazarus said:
Having considered all aspects, I feel my time spent in budgetary and choosing cheap alternatives and unnecessary form filling would be better spent giving my patients a service I already provide.
Dr. Desai said:
The new contract is likely to cause deterioration in the service as doctors will not have time for promotive and preventative work if they have to look after more patients. In inner cities the situation is likely to worsen. The proposed payment structure for preventative work and immunisations etc., will make doctors despondent and lose interest in such work. The targets stated are not achievable as they depend on the patients.
Dr. Watt said:
The immunisation and cervical smear targets are unreasonable. GPs cannot be a paternalistic police force forcing people to have what is good for them.
Dr. Christopher Derret said:
Increased capitation fees are not an incentive to doctors to spend less time with each patient. Many patients say they already think their doctor gives too little time for each consultation. Quantity not quality is to be paid for. In the inner cities morbidity is higher and patient consultation rate can be almost double that in some prosperous areas.
The hon. Member for Thanet, South also mentioned that point. Dr. Derret went on:
There is a widespread fear that the Government has a hidden agenda for the privatisation of Health Care.
Dr. Cramsie said—

Mr. Aitken: On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Is it in order for an hon. Member to read out verbatim quotes from doctors' letters with no break when many hon. Members on both sides of the House have speeches which they have thought about carefully and wish to deliver?

Madam Deputy Speaker (Miss Betty Boothroyd): It is for hon. Members to deploy their arguments as they wish, but I remind the House that many hon. Members wish to take part in the debate and I appeal for very short speeches.

Mr. Leighton: I take your point, Madam Deputy Speaker, and I take the point made by the hon. Member for Thanet, South, but we are debating the views of the doctors. I am giving the views of rank and file doctors working in my constituency. Those are the views they have given me, which they have asked me to represent in Parliament. I shall compromise and read out two more letters. Perhaps the House will then have got the message from their remarks.
Dr. Rachman says:
The plan to change the BPA to a per capita allowance will discourage existing practices from taking on new partners —there will be no incentive to. Instead I believe we will all be encouraged to employ assistants—these are often women and have no prospects of promotion or extension of their role. This is a retrograde move which seriously affects the position of all new young doctors seeking partnerships.
Dr. Haas says:
I am very concerned that patients will find it hard to develop trust in their doctors as they will no longer see us as their advocates but as agents of cost control. Most of all, the health of those able to shout least loud, the old and physically handicapped will suffer.
That is an accurate reflection of doctors' views in my constituency. I would be delighted to give the Secretary of State the pile of correspondence so that he can read it. He

should not laugh at the doctors' views or mock them. The doctors work in the depressed and deprived inner city. They have many problems. They considered the White Paper, then contacted me and asked me to put their views in the House.
How can the Secretary of State implement the proposals against what even he calls the "British medical opposition"? If the doctors do not become budget holders and if the hospitals do not opt out, what is left of the proposals? The Secretary of State should listen carefully and respectfully to the views of doctors. He should take his White Paper away and launch a genuine consultation. He should proceed by agreement to achieve a strong, free and adequately funded NHS.

Mr. Jerry Hayes: It was fascinating, to listen to the hon. Member for Newham, North-East (Mr. Leighton). Although it may destroy his political career, I must say that I rather like him. He held himself spellbound by some of the most awful codswallop. What have the doctors been reading? They must have been reading letters from the hon. Gentleman and the British Medical Association. If they want to hear what the Government are doing through the White Paper I would be only too delighted—and I am sure that many of my hon. Friends would be delighted—to speak to the doctors in Newham, North-East. I lay that down as a friendly challenge.

Mr. Leighton: The hon. Gentleman would have to be rather careful. If he spoke to the doctors like that, several of them in their white coats might think that it was a section 42 job and take him away.

Mr. Hayes: I concede that one on points.
It was fascinating to listen to the right hon. Member for Blaenau Gwent (Mr. Foot). It is always a joy to listen to such eloquence. Although I thought about what he said carefully, in the words of F. E. Smith, I was none the wiser or better informed. There was a lot of chat about destabilisation and under-resourcing. It suddenly dawned on me that this speech was coming from a member of a Labour Cabinet which cut capital expenditure on hospital building by 30 per cent., which for the first time in the history of the National Health Service agreed to cut the overall budget of the Health Service in real terms and which agreed to spend more on defence than on the Health Service—the opposite to what is happening now.
I want to draw to the attention of the House what was probably the most telling remark in the debate so far. It was made by the hon. Member for Livingston (Mr. Cook). He said that there would be a breach of the trust between doctor and patient and he asked how a patient would be able to look a doctor in the eye and trust him. The hon. Gentleman is right, especially when one considers the doctors who put skulls and crossbones up in their surgeries, the doctors who have been warning the most vulnerable members of society, such as the elderly, that they will not be welcome at their surgeries and the doctors who, at the instigation of the BMA, have put at the bottom of their prescriptions, "Voting Conservative will damage your health." That is where there has been a breach of trust. It has been a breach of trust by a small minority of general practitioners and by the overwhelming majority of the BMA.
I raised a point with the hon. Member for Livingston earlier. He was giving a long litany of the opposition from the medical bodies, but he did not mention the National Association of Health Authorities in England and Wales. He stood there as if polyunsaturated margarine would not melt in his mouth and said that the association was the stooge of the Government. Yet the members of that association are the people who run the Health Service. I and many of my hon. Friends believe that their views are important. With the leave of the House, I shall quote the association's conclusions, warts and all, which is what consultation is all about. The association said:
Overall, the Association welcomes many of the proposals in the White Paper. These include the more effective use of resources, greater responsiveness to the needs of the general public, clinical audit, greater delegation to the operational level, more involvement of clinicians in management and incentives for providing better services. The Association is also supportive of the separation of funding and provision of services.
It has to be recognised, however, that whilst many of these proposals are welcome, there are also a number of risks. The principal risk is that in the more diffuse NHS that is likely to emerge in the post White paper situation, it may be more difficult for the Service to guarantee comprehensive services to the population as a whole. It is therefore essential that RHAs, FPCs and DHAs are given the ability and authority to ensure that services are accessible, integrated, of a high quality and well funded. If these conditions are met, the NHS can look forward to the future with confidence.
That is constructive criticism such as my right hon. and learned Friend welcomes.

Mrs. Alice Mahon: Can the hon. Gentleman tell us how many letters he has received from GPs and consultants supporting the Government's proposals? Like my hon. Friend the Member for Newham, North-East (Mr. Leighton), who was criticised for doing so, I could read out a file of letters from doctors who oppose the Government. How many letters has the hon. Gentleman received in support?

Mr. Hayes: The hon. Lady has raised a valid point. I have received many letters from general practitioners who are wholly opposed to the White Paper. But when I go to see them and talk to them about it, they realise that the proposals are working for their patients. The overwhelming majority of general practitioners care deeply about their patients and do not like to be conned by people making cynical political capital out of other people's misfortune, as is happening now. The time must come when, in the words of my hon. Friend the Member for Thanet, South (Mr. Aitken), the dust must be allowed to settle, the megaphone diplomacy must stop and we must get round the table with those who care about the Health Service—the GPs, the consultants, the administrators and the nurses. There is much in the proposals for all of them, as they will appreciate soon. In the past—and I see my right hon. and learned Friend the Chief Whip sitting here —I have been highly critical of Government policy on the Health Service—[HON. MEMBERS: "No."] Yes. That may come as a shock to some of my hon. Friends. Some of us have voted against the Government, but when they get it right, we should darn well support them.

Dame Jill Knight: My hon. Friend spoke about letters he had received from doctors. Will he take the point that those doctors have been grossly misled and misinformed by their own leaders about the true contents of the review?

Mr. Hayes: Of course, many of us on the Select Committee raised that issue with the people who run the BMA, and they have said, "This is what we feel is in the White Paper," or, "This is what we think might be in the White Paper." However, when confronted with the facts and the reality, they are speechless—[Interruption.] Let us be constructive. This is a time when there should be sensible negotiations.
Going back to something else that my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Dame J. Knight) said, this is not the first time such things have happened because all of us can remember notices going up in local surgeries in 1985 about the limited list. We all received letters from doctors, consultants and even from elderly patients who said, "My health will deteriorate if this wicked proposal goes through." That proposal was put forward by the then Minister of State, my right hon. and learned Friend who is now the Secretary of State for Health. There was sensible negotiation on that, the NHS saved £75 million and patients are receiving a good standard of health care. If one speaks to a GP now and says, "Hang on, a few years ago I saw a poster in your surgery about limited lists," that GP will probably say, "Oh well, we agreed with it really." I suspect that when GPs hear the truth now, the same thing will happen.
However, there are a few things that I should like my right hon. and learned Friend to take into account—[HON. MEMBERS: "Ah."] This is not a criticism. It is about negotiation and consultation. I want to put to my right hon. and learned Friend some of the points that many doctors have put to me and to some of my hon. Friends. I know that my right hon. and learned Friend has said on television and on radio that there will be compromise and negotiation. I ask him to look carefully at the rural practice allowance, which is concerning many doctors. I ask him to look also at the 20-hours provision because it is absolutely right that there should be a division between part-timers and full-timers and many doctors are concerned that the Secretary of State means 20 hours in the surgery, which might cause problems. I am sure that my right hon. and learned Friend will look again at such things and at the targets for immunisation which in many areas, especially in highly ethnically populated areas, might cause some difficulty. Perhaps it will be worth considering some form of exemption for doctors who have done their very best to get people in for cervical smears and immunisation but whose patients do not turn up. I do not see why the doctors should be penalised.
The Health Service is really about people getting their operations. One can wax lyrical about more money and about more doctors and nurses, but what people really care about is getting into hospital for their operation. Once they are in hospital, they like the nurses and the doctors —they do not much like the food—and they are satisfied with the service. The main thing is to get the patients into hospital.
The crucial thing about this whole review—my right hon. and learned Friend said this at the beginning of his speech—is that the efficiency trap will be abolished. We have a ridiculous state of affairs at the moment. We are paying hospitals to close beds for economic reasons. More


patients are being treated, more operations are being performed—this is happening every day—but approximately 20 per cent. of National Health Service beds are being closed. That will cease if the money travels with the patient because it will then be in the interests of hospitals to keep beds open.
I turn briefly to the private sector. There will be shock and gasps of horror from Opposition Members who will ask how one dares to mention the private sector. The private sector is working at about 45 per cent. capacity. Let us examine what is happening in, dare I say it, South Glamorgan where the South Glamorgan health authority has done a deal with an excellent private hospital in Southampton called Chalybeate. The South Glamorgan health authority has contracted all its open heart surgery to that private hospital. The families of the patients are looked after. They are transported to Southampton and put up in hotels. The operations are carried out speedily and efficiently. There is absolutely no cost to the patient. What is more, because of surplus capacity the South Glamorgan health authority is saving money. If ever there was an example of co-operation between the private and public sectors, that is it. That is what we are aiming for in the White Paper because what is happening in South Glamorgan should be happening all over the country and we should have the opportunity to let it happen.
The last point that I wish to raise with my right hon. and learned Friend—

Mr. David Hinchliffe: rose—

Mr. Hayes: No, on another occasion. I shall not give way because other hon. Members wish to speak in the debate.
I should like to say a few brief words about the Treasury. It is important to mention the Treasury because in the past the Treasury has been able to play all sorts of people off against each other. The Select Committee may say, "£2 billion is needed for the Health Service", the nurses can say, "£X billion" and the doctors, "£Y billion", but no one really knows how much the Health Service really needs because no one knows the cost of an operation or a treatment.

Mr. Battle: What about tax cuts on private health?

Mr. Hayes: The hon. Gentleman refers to tax cuts, but they are totally irrelevant to what we are talking about.
How can one plan for the future unless one knows how much operations and treatment cost? When information technology comes in and when doctors know the cost of an operation, persuasive and almost unanswerable arguments will be put to the Treasury about putting more money into the Health Service. In the past no one has known where the money has been going, but at least we will now be able to know that.
Before I sit down, I should like to say a few brief words about the existing system because in the meantime we have a problem, especially in areas with large waiting lists. My own West Essex health authority is in the top 22. My right hon. and learned Friend has helpfully given us waiting list initiative money and, although we have also been given £800,000 in growth money, we have suddenly been told that the North East Thames regional health authority, which has loaned us £1.5 million to be paid back over three years, is going back on its agreement and wants to take that £800,000 growth money. I ask my right hon. and

learned Friend to look carefully at that instance of gross mismanagement, which must be totally contrary to his wishes and those of his health team. Growth money must be for growth and must be specifically earmarked.
All in all, there may be difficulties with my right hon. and learned Friend's White Paper and with the working document, but I advise him to listen to the views of the general practitioners and of the Health Service professionals because I further advise him that when they hear what the White Paper is trying to do and that it will work for patients, they will support it.

Mr. Andrew Welsh: I shall be as brief as possible, simply because I wish to let as many other hon. Members as possible speak in the debate. I shall speak faster than my normally fast pace because I want to put on the record some of the comments that have been put to me by local doctors; after all, this is their debate.
One depressing development, both in the debate and before we reached this stage, has been the vitriolic language of the Government and their supporters and the abuse that they have hurled at general practitioners because of their opposition to the National Health Service proposals. In choosing to react with the language of confrontation and abuse, the Secretary of State is making a big mistake and is completely misunderstanding the mood and reasoned arguments of the profession, which will be faced with implementing the changes if they are passed by the House.
General practitioners are opposed to these provisions not for the sake of opposition, but because they genuinely feel that patient care and the National Health Service will be the losers if the proposals are not amended drastically. I have received the highest ever mailing in my constituency from individuals and groups opposed to the Government's proposals. In the words of Angus district health authority, its members are agreed that
The proposals in the White Paper are so far reaching and so unwarranted that the Council should take immediate action in an effort to enlist the help and support of every inhabitant in Angus in fighting against implementation of these proposals".
Let the Government be in no doubt about the strength of opposition to these White Paper proposals. I have never heard doctors so united, so angry and so opposed to any set of measures as they are to these Government proposals. I am sure that the situation in my constituency is no different from that in many others.
The doctors' basic argument is not about money. It is based purely on the relationship between doctor and patient and is about their ability to provide the best quality of service as professionals and at reasonable cost to the taxpayer. Doctors have told me that there are fundamental and dangerous trends in the Government's proposals that will inevitably strike at the heart of the National Health Service.
Unamended, the proposals will mean that cost rather than care will become the criterion for health provision. Medical professionals will become more like accountants, bargaining over prices and debt collection. Inevitably, it will be in the interests of health boards and GP budget holders to look for the cheapest service in order to direct cash to other areas. Inevitably, under these proposals, there will be an inbuilt bias towards offering only the most convenient and profitable services. The Minister should


make that clear to the general public, because in every survey the public have made it clear to the Government that people's preference is for the maximum service delivered as close to their own homes as possible.
That will simply not happen under the Government's proposals. Indeed, the opposite will occur. The accent will be on delivery of uncomplicated care for the young and generally fit adults, not on complex, unprofitable services. That will inevitably lead to poorer facilities and opportunities for patients, particularly the elderly or chronically sick. I always thought that those were the people for whom the National Health Service was designed to cater, but the proposals will take us in the opposite direction.
Scarce resources will mean that medical treatment is placed to one side while doctors are placed in a new bureaucracy, and it will mean the advertising which this system will, by definition, spawn. There will be fragmentation—I find this the least forgivable thing that the Government are introducing—of the National Health Service into a two-tier hospital system, thus ending the national, comprehensive system of care that we have so far enjoyed.
My local doctors want to make it very clear to the Government that they see dangers in the proposals—dangers that budgets will dictate treatment, and that there will be a financial inducement not to treat. For example, regarding tests and referrals, doctors will be given an incentive to use only the cheapest hospitals, and there will be a break in the close relationship between GPs and locally based consultants. The GPs will be drawn towards refusing new patients who require long-term, expensive treatment, putting at risk the worst off in deprived areas, the old and the disabled. Because of budgetary restraints, general practitioners may well not accept patients who need expensive drugs.

Mr. Kenneth Hind: rose—

Mr. Welsh: If the hon. Member does not mind, I will not give way. He may get a chance to speak later.

Mr. Hind: But the BMA—

Mr. Welsh: This is not the BMA; these are my local doctors. It is the doctors who are the profesionals and who have to deal with this and they have a right to be heard in the House.
There is a fear that doctors will increase the number of young, generally fit adults on their lists, and be forced to do so by their competitors. The very thing that the Government are introducing—the force of competition —will lead to doctors taking a path that they would not normally take, instead of giving treatment to all their patients as they need and deserve. That is inevitable and inbuilt in the arrangements.
I want to use the words of the general practitioners to describe their concern, because they will have the reality on their hands if the Government push these measures through. One doctor says:
The introduction of practice budgets and indicative drug budgets is seen as a cost-cutting exercise which serves to put financial pressures on the GP and undoubtedly will lead to a deterioration in the doctor-patient relationship. All doctors are aware that economies can be made in drug prescribing and the profession should be supported in their attempts to

diminish costs in such a way that it will not adversely affect patient care, rather than have radical, ill-conceived methods imposed on it. The increase in remuneration from capitation fees will lead to a rise in list sizes rather than the reduction we have seen in recent years. This means less time per patient, a decline in the quality of care and ultimately a decrease in the number of GPs.
I put again to the Minister the point regarding women general practitioners. Women have a right to expect that the Minister will have regard to their problems and address them. What is their future under the Government's proposals? Can he guarantee that women doctors will not be adversely treated and will be allowed to carry on making their very important contribution to the medical profession? I hope that the Minister will answer that point.
My local doctors have made detailed, reasoned criticisms of the Government's proposals on budgeting, capitation fees, effects on partnerships and women doctors and drug budgeting. Only time prevents me from analysing them. No doubt they will be raised as the debate continues and as the Government move towards legislation.
I want to put one more point to the Government. One doctor says:
my colleagues and I do not see the new proposals as working for patients but rather as working against patients. The new charter will provide less time and less choice for patients and will engender within the profession a mentality more akin to achieving personal wealth rather than patients' health. The knock-on effects will be to accelerate the rate of litigation in this country and a litigation strewn profession is ultimately damaging for patients and more expensive. I must condemn … the Secretary for Health for attempting to bluster and hustle the profession on this matter and I must further condemn him for throwing up a smoke screen over the real issues. It is particularly noticeable that, when asked pertinent questions, he merely diverts the discussion by blaming us for 'feeling for our wallets'. It is the Secretary of State who is feeling for the NHS wallet and he is prepared to see patient care suffer in the execution of this.
I have tried to state how my doctors feel, because this debate is about them. My plea is quite simply for the Government to think again. If they insist on these changes, they should introduce them gradually on an experimental basis to see whether they work. If there are all these great benefits to be gained from such experiments, let them be tried and tested and let everybody see them. If this scheme is simply imposed on the medical profession we may well find that the loser will be the nation, because our National Health Service will suffer a massive trauma and its essence will be destroyed if the Government go ahead unhindered. My message is clear and my plea is, quite simply, that the Government think again.

Sir Michael McNair-Wilson: If I really believed all the dire warnings that we have heard from all parts of the House, I should be the most frightened man in the House tonight because I am numbered among the chronically sick and am on extremely expensive medication. As it is, however, I believe what my right hon. and learned Friend has said, I believe in his White Paper and he has my support. The White Paper is a most far-reaching document that will undoubtedly set the course for the Health Service in the future.
In the 40 years since its inception the National Health Service has transformed the general practitioner from a family doctor who had both to provide for his patients and his community's care and win for himself an income into


a Government servant who no longer has to consider the budget he spends. That is a very far cry indeed from what existed before the NHS was set up.
Now, as we know, when a young doctor wants to enter general practice he can get a start only if there is a vacancy in a group practice or if that group practice decides to take on an additional partner. At least, thanks to the White Paper, more vacancies should occur when doctors have to retire at 65.
Before the NHS existed doctors were practising in a competitive world. In the world before the NHS any doctor who chose to go into practice could put up his plate and see what patients he could pick up. My father, who practised in Argyllshire and in Northumberland, told me that in those days when one got a call late at night one did not hesitate to go, because if one did not another doctor got the patient. That was a competitive edge that does not exist any more.
In the past 40 years of the NHS the balance has changed so that the modern GP, while he is no doubt just as dedicated as his predecessor and a great deal more effective as a provider of cures for diseases which were once incurable, has not had to consider or take responsibility for the financial consequences of his action. He has become a different type of practitioner. His salary is not won in competition with his fellows. He is a state servant answerable to the family practitioner service, which is currently funded by the Department of Health on an open-ended contract to the tune of £4·2 billion a year—a threefold increase since 1978–79.
To change that and to impose budgetary limits is bound to be seen as an assault on a situation that suits GPs very well. Suddenly they are being asked to relearn those financial skills that their predecessors took for granted. It would be surprising if they did not protest, especially as some of them may be affected by the changes in a way that may reduce their incomes.
I want now to refer to a question that I asked my hon. and learned Friend the Minister of State during Question Time last week concerning rural practices. I was not talking about a rural practice in a sparsely populated area that, according to the White Paper, is to receive special help, but one which is to some extent restricted by the ward limitations in the White Paper. A country practice, such as many in my constituency, cannot significantly increase its list size however hard its doctors work. Even if it could physically cope with an increased patient load, there are no other patients for that practice to treat. I do not see how it can have the basic practice allowance reduced from 60 to 40 per cent. and be expected to make up the difference out of capitation if the patients are not there.
By the same token, such a practice is to lose the rural practice allowance. My right hon. and learned Friend will know that that allowance really relates to the mileage that the doctor does in his constituency. It is the sort of thing that each one of us, as Members of Parliament, accepts as part of our constituency expenses. If a rural practitioner sees his basic practice allowance reduced, and is required to make up the difference from a capitation that he cannot achieve, and he loses his rural practice allowance, how can he possibly feel other than that his remuneration is being reduced? Although I heard my right hon. and learned Friend give the average figure for GPs' salaries after the White Paper, nevertheless it is an average figure. I would be grateful if in that connection he would look at the situation of rural practitioners.
The downward pressure on drug budgets, which will have the greatest effect on the pharmaceutical industry and make it look at its pricing in a way it has never done before, may make isolated dispensaries in country areas less viable. Again, the rural practitioner could find himself at a disadvantage. As ancillary and attached staff are probably more important to country practices, cost-limiting that section of the allowance may endanger such services as the mini-buses that many practices run to take their patients to and from surgery.
Then there is the position of women GPs referred to by the hon. Member for Roxburgh and Berwickshire (Mr. Kirkwood). Many women GPs are part-timers, because they are married. They are concerned that the new proposals will militate against them and practices will prefer a full-time male doctor to, for sake of argument, two part-time women assistants. I understand that more than 50 per cent. of doctors training for general practice are women. As matters now stand, there is a financial advantage to be gained by a group practice in taking on women as part-timers, but that advantage will disappear if the White Paper proposals go through as they are at present. I believe that those proposals must be reconsidered. I do not believe that there should be financial disadvantages that could militate against women remaining as part-time GPs. They are popular, excellent and a valuable asset to the service.
The question of screening, and especially the surveillance of elderly patients, is set out on page 30, paragraph II of the new contract. A doctor from a practice in my constituency, which has 500 patients of 75 years and over, told me that surveillance would cost that practice 500 man hours per year, yet he doubted the value of that exercise because of the age of the patients. That point was supported by a doctor in a BBC medical programme. In that doctor's view, screening can produce psychological distress without achieving anything worthwhile. He said that, unless definite and provable benefits can be demonstrated from such screening of the elderly, the programme will simply be a waste of money and doctors' time.
The White Paper rightly places emphasis on preventive medicine, vaccinations, immunisation and cervical smears. It sets a very high target for GPs to reach before they receive payment for that work, unlike the present situation where they are paid for each treatment. I question whether the target for cervical smears is realistic. I shall cite the figures given to me by one doctor for his practice. Of the women he tested, 10 per cent. had had a hysterectomy and 8 per cent. refused a smear. In his practice, the annual turnover of women patients was 20 per cent. Accepting those figures, he claimed that a figure of 82 per cent. was achieveable if one included women who had had hysterectomies, or 71 per cent. if, and reasonably, one did not. One might honestly question the value of a cervical smear on a woman who has had a hysterectomy. If he is right—and I know how dangerous it is to generalise from the particular—is 80 per cent. the right target for cervical smears or is that a target beyond the reach of the average practice?
One of the points that has been raised with me in so many of the letters that I, too, have received about the White Paper concerns the status of the chronically sick —someone like myself who requires expensive medical treatment to stay alive. From my reading of the White Paper and the working documents, I believe that I am right


in believing that the chronically sick have an inalienable right to be on a GP's list, to be treated in hospital and to receive whatever medication is laid down for them. What is more, no GP will be put at a financial disadvantage by having such a patient on his or her list, nor will his drug budget be considered to be overspent because that patient requires very expensive drugs, which takes the GP over his or her stated target. I believe that to be the case, but I would be grateful if my right hon. and learned Friend could reinforce that point in his reply. By the same token, can my right hon. and learned Friend state categorically that, whether a hospital chooses to be self-governing or not, it will be required to provide certain essential core services to its local community?
During my time in hospital and having talked over a number of years to those who run hospitals, I have been told again and again how much they wished they had control of their budgets and were allowed to develop the assets of their hospitals to maximise resources. I remember a consultant at the Battle hospital in Reading telling me that, if he had his way, he would build a 10-bedded private unit in the grounds of the hospital because of the funds that that would generate for the hospital overall. He was not interested in the out-of-date, political point-scoring about a two-tier system. He was interested in getting the maximum resources for a large general hospital. When I asked him why he did not do so, he said that it was because the regional health authority would consider that the additional funds were its and that the Battle hospital might not benefit at all. Therefore, nothing was done.
The White Paper encourages me to think that in future hospitals—especially those that are self-governing—will be able to make the best use of their assets knowing that by doing so they can improve their cash flows and their services. I welcome such a proposal.

Mr. Bill Michie: I am happy and grateful to speak in this short debate. I have been instructed that I have no more than five minutes in which to do it. It is obviously an important debate and many Opposition Members have talked about what is, perhaps, the first love of anyone in the Labour party—the National Health Service. My hon. Friend the Member for Livingston (Mr. Cook) was right when he said that many doctors, and indeed many patients, feel that they have been deceived by the Government. Nobody at the last election realised what was in the mind of the Government. It was obvious that the Government were not prepared to put that in their manifesto to the people.
Doctors and patients know very well that, if one increases the number of patients, one cannot increase the number of hours in a day, so there must be less time per patient. That strikes me as simple arithmetic. We know that in future the prosperous surgeries will be in areas where people are generally prosperous. In areas such as Sheffield, which I represent—the inner cities, the poor areas and certainly some of the rural areas—practices will have certain difficulties that will not be resolved by the White Paper.
The Secretary of State has got angry about this issue and has hit out at the Labour party for exploiting the situation for political purposes. The only reason why the

Secretary of State has attacked politicians, patients and doctors is that he must defend thin ground and he finds it difficult to do so. Instead of attempting to explain the Government's case, he has gone on the attack.
The Secretary of State has said that doctors' opposition to the proposals is based on different motives from the Labour party's opposition. From my discussions with doctors, I believe that their motives are similar to mine —they are worried about the future state of the Health Service rather than their wages or anything else. The right hon. and learned Gentleman has said that, as a result of the proposals, GPs' pay will rise substantially, but their main concern is not pay, but patient care and what will happen to their surgeries. If the scheme is so good, why are so many doctors against it? Where are all the doctors who are in favour?

Mrs. Mahon: Does my hon. Friend share my disgust at the hon. Member for Harlow (Mr. Hayes), who could not produce a single letter from a GP in support of the proposals? I found it contemptible when he said that, when he had gone along to talk to doctors, they had changed their minds. He must think that we are all daft and that GPs are thick, which is insulting.

Mr. Michie: My hon. Friend took the words out of my mouth. There is no doubt that doctors are concerned about their patients rather than their own skins. Doctors know that they will spend more time checking the accounts than checking their patients, more time looking for the cheap hospital instead of looking at each patient and deciding how to treat that person.
In my constituency, a meeting of the regional branch of the BMA attracted 200 doctors, which was almost a record; doctors do not always turn up at those meetings, as they are such busy people. Those doctors watched the video that has been produced by the Government—they have spent millions on that propaganda. Those doctors were so impressed by that video that they voted, almost unanimously, against the White Paper. The video is a waste of taxpayers' money. Those doctors were horrified by it. It is supposed to be subtle stuff, but the doctors understood it and they voted on a motion tantamount to resignation.
Local doctors are not thick; they understand the situation. They are not greedy; all they want is to be assured that everything will be all right for their patients.

Mr. Allen McKay: Does my hon. Friend agree that the argument that the doctors have been brainwashed by the BMA is a slur on doctors who have been in practice all their lives, often following their fathers and grandfathers? Such an argument implies that they cannot think for themselves.

Mr. Michie: My hon. Friend is correct. The only person who has been indoctrinated is the Secretary of State. He was not keen when he started off, but now he is convinced that his proposals will work. He has tried to reverse the argument by maintaining that doctors have been brainwashed.
Doctors are keen and dedicated. I have had my disagreements, political or otherwise, with my local doctors. On this occasion, however, we are not arguing about politics; that is why I was so annoyed with the Secretary of State when he tried to make it a political issue.


He tried to argue about what the Labour party would say rather than what doctors and others have said about the proposals.
I know that the Secretary of State has received a letter from one doctor in my constituency. At the end of that letter, the doctor says that the Secretary of State should resign, or change his mind; otherwise, he will resign. That doctor has not been indoctrinated in any way. He is a strong practising Christian in the community and he feels so strongly about the White Paper that he believes that the Secretary of State should give up his job or he will give up his.
When the Government decide to give us time for a major debate on the White Paper, I hope that they will think again. If they really believe that the White Paper is a marvellous idea, they should follow the advice in the Opposition motion—they should delay the changes for the time being and put them to the people at the next general election. If they do that, the Labour party will be home and dry.

Mr. Douglas French: My remarks are based on extensive consultation with many doctors who are practising in Gloucester and the Gloucestershire district, who are a highly professional and effective group of practitioners. The Gloucestershire district has one of the best patient-doctor ratios in the country and it has one of the lowest FPC average prescription costs. It also carries out a high percentage of cervical smears in comparison with other districts.
I hope that the Secretary of State will be able to confirm that, as a result of his proposals, such an area will not witness a relative outflow of funds. There may be other areas that need funds, but if the declared aim of the proposals is to bring the worst up to the standards of the best, that cannot be done unless the best retain all the funding that they already receive.
I acknowledge what my right hon. and learned Friend has said on other occasions: that the proposed new system will not force—I emphasise that word—doctors to take on more patients, and that their overriding aim will be to please patients so as to retain them. For many years, list sizes in the Gloucestershire district have been gradually reducing. They are now down to below 1,800, compared with the national average of 1,969. That does not mean that doctors are having an easy time, but it is one of the reasons for the district's good patient care figures. I believe that that evidence proves that there is a relationship between shorter lists and good patient care.
One of my chief anxieties is that there is an incentive within the new system to build up lists. I know that the new system can be presented in different ways, but I believe that that incentive exists. The doctor can make up his income from other services, but an increased list appears to be one way in which to do so. That would come about not because increased income is of paramount importance, but because increased income happens to be one result of larger lists. Therefore, the proposed system pulls in an opposite direction from shorter lists which, historically, have achieved good results in the Gloucestershire district. It is true that the reduced list may provide the lazy doctor with an easy life, but it also provides the hard-working, diligent doctor with the best possible opportunity to give his patients the best attention.
I have two comments to make about the capitation proposals. First, my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury (Sir M. McNair-Wilson) has already referred to the likely effect on the enlistment of women doctors who perform an important role, often in a part-time capacity. The White Paper makes reference to incentives for female doctors, but paragraph 47a of the new contract is far from clear on this matter. I want to be assured that the new arrangements will not mean women doctors failing to be offered appointments that might otherwise have been open to them. Secondly, there may be pressure against taking on new doctors who do not bring personal lists to a practice. When some doctors reach retirement, their posts may not be filled automatically by new doctors.
Although I have reservations about the greater emphasis on capitation as proposed in the new system, I support the emphasis on new services and the incentives to provide comprehensive services to the patient covering prevention and treatment. The emphasis on health promotion, disease prevention, screening and check-ups is welcome. I hope that the value put on services such as minor operations will be realistic and cover the initial outlay not only for the instruments that may be required, but for the costs of consumables. That figure should be based on a proper costing rather than on a subjective judgment about what figure may or may not be sufficient encouragement for a doctor to undertake an operation.
On other occasions, my right hon. and learned Friend has said that the targets that he has set for immunisation and cervical smear tests may be subject to some modification. In Gloucestershire, the number of women having cervical smears is greater than in any other district, but in some cases an 80 per cent. target would be unrealistic. In a practice in Gloucester city, 19 per cent. of the female patients aged between 35 and 65 have had a hysterectomy, 5 per cent. decided against the test, 6 per cent. failed to respond to letters and 14 per cent. are over the age of 70. It is hardly appropriate to apply such a percentage in that type of practice.
There has been much talk about doctors being available for consultation in the surgery for 20 hours a week. I find the opposition to that requirement less persuasive than the other points that have been made to me. There may be individual cases where it would cause hardship, but it seems illogical to be saying, on the one hand, that more time is needed with individual patients and, on the other, that 20 hours in the surgery is too much.
I believe that many of the proposals will enhance choice, competition, accountability and responsibility, and all those are to be welcomed. But the reservations I have mentioned will, I hope, be addressed by the Secretary of State before he reaches any final conclusions on the package to be adopted.

Ms. Harriet Harman: It is clear from the debate this afternoon that the Government have lost the argument—[Interruption.] Conservative Members who have just drifted into the Chamber may care to know that only one Government Back Bencher, the hon. Member for Lancaster (Dame E. Kellett-Bowman), unreservedly supported the Government's plans—[Interruption.] The day the Government pray in aid the hon. Member for Harlow (Mr. Hayes) is the day when they are really facing hard times selling their proposals.
It is clear that the concerns of the Government are completely different from the concerns of everybody else. The Government are talking about accounting, costing and pricing. Everyone else is talking about people, health and wellbeing. The Government are concerned about a healthy bank balance. Everyone else is concerned about a healthy patient.
The Government think that the major battle for the next century is to make the NHS cheaper. All their plans go towards achieving that. We and everyone else believe that the major battle is to make the NHS better and to move on to conquer the major killer diseases such as cancer and heart disease. The Tories simply do not understand. They think that doctors are interested only in money, because that is all that interests them.
The Government do not understand that they cannot bully and bribe their way out of this. By accusing the doctors, first, of stupidity—by saying, "They do not understand our plans"—and, secondly, of greediness, they have simply hardened the attitude of doctors and astounded the public. The Tories do not understand that they are up against a profound NHS culture which affects Tory voting doctors in the shires as much as it affects working class communities in inner cities. The Government will discover that on Thursday in the Vale of Glamorgan. They are badly out of touch with the popular pulse.
The Secretary of State cannot have it both ways. In his amendment to our motion he
welcomes the widespread medical support for the objectives of the White Paper".
In his speech, however, he did little more than berate what he was pleased to describe as "the British Medical opposition."
Conservative Members cannot say that the doctors do not understand and that they are being led by the nose by their leaders. The BMA's general medical services committee sent to every GP reprints of every working paper as well as the general medical services committee's comments. The thoroughness with which the doctors went about their consultations stands in marked contrast with the total failure of the Government to carry out any consultations. Having failed to consult anyone, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Blaenau Gwent (Mr. Foot) pointed out, they went on to spend over £1¼ million of taxpayers' money trying to persuade us that it is a good idea.
The Government must accept that it is not because doctors do not understand the plans that they are against them. They are against them because they understand them and do not like the way they will work. That must be clear to all Conservative Members when they read the letters that are swamping their postbags from local GPs.

Mr. Hind: The hon. Lady claims that by reading letters from GPs we become aware of their views. That is so, but most of the letters I have received show that the GPs in question have not read the detailed working papers properly —[Interruption.]—and that some of them are listening to the sort of propaganda that the hon. Lady has been sending to weekly newspapers such as I have in my constituency suggesting that, in some way, my local hospital will be opted out. She and many of her colleagues are responsible for the disinformation that is currently being disseminated.

Ms. Harman: I challenge the hon. Gentleman to send me copies of letters he has received from GPs whom he claims have not read the working papers and do not understand what is proposed in the White Paper. We shall then be able to see whether what he says is simply bluff and bluster.
The message from every independent medical organisation is twofold—that the plans will harm patients and that the timetable for their implementation is wildly unrealistic. Even the American professor who is credited with thinking up some of these proposals cannot understand why they are not being preceded by pilot schemes and believes that the Government are attempting to implement them with amazing speed.
Five out of six of the consultant teams who have pioneered the resource management initiative have rejected the timetable for opt-out because they say that they—the front line, the six leaders—will not be ready, and the sixth is Guy's hospital, where profound concern exists because of the feeling that they are being steamrollered into opt-out.
The pressure on hospital consultants to support opting out has been shameful. It has been a disgraceful combination of bribery and blackmail along the lines of, "If you are good boys and girls and among the first to opt out, we will see you all right, but if you do not, we will leave you to sink under your budget deficits." That is disgraceful and senior consultants are up in arms about being subjected to that sort of treatment.
The working paper on capital charges sets out the small print about which the BMA has warned consultants—the small print that the Government opt-out salesmen never mention. The Secretary of State talks a great deal about medical audit, but there is only a thin working paper on that saying, basically, "The chaps have thought up medical audit. It is clearly a good idea for the chaps to get on with it." There is little substance in that working paper. The fattest working paper is about capital charges—the "more work for accountants" paper—and it is clear that the Government have really thought about that, though the opt-out salesmen never mention it.
When the Secretary of State decides that a hospital will opt out—and the decision will be his and not that of the hospital—the hospital will take with it into independence all of its debts for its land, buildings and equipment, on which it will have to pay full rates of interest.
St. Thomas's, across the river, estimates that this will mean it having to pay the Treasury about £40 million a year extra. Guy's, a mile or so down the river, will have to pay an extra £27 million a year. This is pressure for the greatest asset-strip of all time. London hospitals in particular, because land values are so high, will simply close down, sell up and move out, leaving the sites of our great London hospitals—[Interruption] I challenge the Secretary of State to deny that, if it is not the case. The sites of our great London hospitals will be snapped up for offices or luxury riverside apartments.
Department of Health officials have already said that two fifths of hospital sites will be sold in this great asset-strip. Conservative Members should read the information that the Department has disseminated. The effect of the capital charges is that opting out for many is likely to spell financial suicide rather than financial freedom.
The Government have said that their plans will increase choice. In fact, choice will be reduced. What choice will


there be for the patient of a GP budget-holder? The patient will have no choice of hospital for tests or treatment because the decision will have been made at the start of the year by the GP negotiating contracts for bulk buys of certain operations and treatments. Those negotiations will take place at the beginning of the year, probably long before the patient has got ill, let alone walked into the surgery. There will be no choice for the patient of a GP budget-holder.
There will be even less choice for the patient of a GP who is not a budget-holder. The decision on where that patient will go if in need of hospital tests or treatment will not rest with the GP but will be made at the start of the year by health authority managers who never see the patient. They will make a decision based on cost. They will get the cheapest buy. There is no requirement for them to get the approval of local GPs before contracts are placed. Managers who are not recruited or trained to know anything about clinical standards will make decisions on the basis of cost for patients whom they never see.
That is the absolute opposite of the Prime Minister's wish for treatment at the time of her choice, in the hospital of her choice. Under the NHS as she plans it, the patient will get the hospital of a manager's choice, at the place of the manager's choice and at the cheapest cost. No doubt the Government hope that that will join waiting lists as another powerful incentive for patients to go private and will drive patients out of the NHS.
Despite what the hon. Member for Newbury (Sir M. McNair-Wilson) asked the Secretary of State about, there will be less choice for patients who are elderly or who have long-term illnesses because, as the Royal College of Nursing so aptly described it, for the first time every patient will have a price tag on his head and for the first time doctors will have a financial disincentive to take on to their lists patients who will be expensive in requiring drugs or hospital treatment.
The right to choose a GP is not matched anywhere in the White Paper or in the working papers by a right to be accepted by that GP. The GP could say that his list was full. How will the Government police that? GPs will not refuse to take on more patients because they are lazy or heartless but because, with cash limits, they will have to balance the resources available for existing patients against the demands of future patients.
The greatest cheek is for the Government to offer us a choice that we already have—the chance of travelling hundreds of miles away from home to get treatment. We already have the possibility of travelling across boundaries, but people do not often do that because no one in his right mind wants to travel hundreds of miles to get treatment. What happens if there is a problem and the patient is stranded at the hospital? What happens if there is a need for post-operative care and the patient is unable to go back easily to that hospital?
The Government do not understand those arguments because they are about the patient and not about cost. The Government think only of the cost and never of the patient. GPs have seen what fierce spending limits have done to patients waiting for hospital treatment. They do not relish cash limits on GP services. Despite the fact that only last week the Secretary of State was still asserting that there will not be cash limits, it is clear from the working papers, and clear already from the Health and Medicines Act 1988, that cash limits on GP services are planned.
The White Paper says that GP budgets will not be underwritten for what are described as too high referral rates. The Government have no idea what a too high or a too low referral rate is. What is needed is not an average referral rate but appropriate referral decisions. The Government do not see that because they are considering not the quality of decisions but only the cost. The same is true of prescribing patterns. The Government are using the blunt instrument of cash limits when they should be using the instrument of training and education.
The Government have said that they have no plans to allow topping-up by patients of GP practice budgets but, if the proposals go ahead, that is inevitable. Even if we do not have the scenario of an individual patient handing over a bundle of notes to back up his demand to go to a particular hospital, we shall see groups of patients getting together for voluntary fund-raising for their own practice to get equipment for a new play area or new reception facilities. In the better-off areas that will free more money for hospital referrals.
The health divide that has already been referred to by my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Mr. Michie) will widen. The patients who need most health care will probably get inferior care and the well-off surgeries will depend on their communities to put their hands in their pockets to finance them in the face of cash limiting. That is how communities have responded when hospitals have been cash-limited. We have already seen that skew the service on the basis of hospitals providing what they think they can get money for rather than what they know the community needs.
The Secretary of State is beginning to look as though he is in as bad shape as his predecessor. He cannot blunder on with his plans because of the weight of public and professional opinion that is so heavily against him. If he falls forward, the doctors, assisted by the public, will get him; if he falls backward, the Prime Minister will get him. Conservative Members should listen to their constituents and to the doctors rather than deride them. Hon. Members have a chance to tell the Government this evening that they cannot press on with their plans before the next general election. They have no mandate to destroy the Health Service. I hope that Conservative Members will join us in voting for the motion.

Mr. Kenneth Clarke: With the leave of the House, I assure hon. Members that I shall speak briefly so that I shall not intrude into the time for the debate on education; that means that I shall not follow the hon. Member for Peckham (Ms. Harman) into the things that she said about the hospital service. I shall reserve my reply for the full debate on the White Paper.
As I am short of time, let me take it at face value that the hon. Lady is interested in producing a better National Health Service. When we debate the proposals for self-governing hospitals and when she sees the expressions of interest that come forward, we will be able to debate the subject more seriously. Those expressions of interest will be taken for what they are described as—expressions of interest with a great deal of detail left to be considered by all in the hospitals concerned or by anyone who wants to commit himself to the proposals. People will want to know, for example, exactly what capital charges will mean for their hospital and for every other hospital in which the


system is being introduced. I reassure the hon. Lady that nonsense about all our great hospitals in London being sold for office blocks is wide of the mark.

Ms. Harman: Two fifths.

Mr. Clarke: Even the suggestion that two fifths of hospitals in London will be sold to property developers for office blocks is very wide of the mark. When we get to the sensible discussions, I hope that that childish parody of our proposals is abandoned and that we can talk about how hospitals which have management in their own hands can contribute to the care of patients.
Most of the debate has been about general practitioners. There was a great deal of letter-reading on all sides. I shall not go as far as the hon. Member for Newham, North-East (Mr. Leighton) who read into the record more of his constituents' letters in 10 minutes than I have ever heard any hon. Member do before. As we were challenged to produce letters, I cannot resist producing just one from a professor in the department of general practice and primary care in a great London teaching hospital not far from the hon. Gentleman's constituency. I shall quote just two paragraphs:
I am in constant contact with several hundred practices scattered over the United Kingdom and it appears that there is a consensus which is not reflected in public statements, and which is positive.
The general feeling is one that the reorganisation is long overdue and that the efficiency of the Health Service has to be materially improved. There is also a considerable welcome for the beginnings of integration of general practice with secondary care.
I too have a sheaf of letters. I could go on quoting consultants and GPs from all over the country.
My hon. Friends keep producing the views of their doctors. We are taking note of those and other views. I was asked by the hon. Member for Roxburgh and Berwickshire (Mr. Kirkwood) and by my hon. Friend the Member for Thanet, South (Mr. Aitken) whether we have over the years considered other possibilities. It is not true that the idea of improving the contract for general practice is an overnight thought that occurred during the Prime Minister's review. Discussions go back five or six years. The hon. Member and my hon. Friend quoted other views and asked whether we had considered other options.
I have not read the recent letter of Professor Morell, but it sounds as though he was commending the idea of a good practice allowance as a feature of a contract based on medical audit. We were discussing that five or six years ago. I remember it well. It was rejected because of medical opposition, which was organised and very strong. Because it was thought that the whole idea of clinical audit and peer review would be jeopardised if linked to payment, we turned away from that and considered other methods of evolving an acceptable contract that reflected the aims to which the Government remain committed—rewarding those doctors who work hardest and best, setting new standards for the introduction of services, particularly in health promotion and disease prevention, and setting new targets for services such as immunisation, screening and so on.
My hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster (Dame E. Kellett-Bowman) pressed all the points made by her general practitioners upon me without reading them into Hansard, as the hon. Member for Newham, North-East

did. Contrary to what was said, she and my hon. Friends the Members for Harlow (Mr. Hayes), for Newbury (Sir M. McNair-Wilson) and for Gloucester (Mr. French) seemed to support the principles behind the White Paper. They wished to take up particular points that general practitioners had put to them about the present state of the contract discussions.
I would welcome a resumption of those discussions. They had been going on for a long time and were broken off at the behest of the negotiators while the conference was held last week. That conference lifted the threat of resignations and began to talk of discussions again and how those discussions should be renewed. I have made it clear throughout that, as long as we reach a conclusion soon at the end of a six-year process, I am prepared to seek to reach agreement on a form of contract with doctors, so long as they demonstrate to me that their negotiators share the aims that I have just enunciated.

Mr. Michael Morris: As my right hon. and learned Friend is prepared to put forward proposals with my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland, which seem broadly to meet general practitioners' requirements, now that the conference is over, is it his intention to meet the English general practitioners and to anglicise those proposals?

Mr. Clarke: I do not want to take the discussions much further on the Floor of the House. The Scottish contract, the so-called tartan contract, was put forward by my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland to represent particularly Scottish problems a few weeks after I had put forward my English proposals. We both took account of the views put to us in producing the Scottish contract. I shall be interested to hear whether general practitioners in Northampton and elsewhere will be interested in accepting what the Scots have so far on offer. I shall be interested to hear whether Scottish general practitioners are content with the tartan contract. No doubt the hon. Member for Angus, East (Mr. Welsh) knows.
Various matters have been raised about which I cannot go into detail here. My hon. Friends the Members for Harlow and for Newbury asked about rural practice. I am perfectly content to continue to discuss the rather curious disagreement between us on rural practice. My negotiators and the BMA negotiators are determined that there must be some special arrangements for rural practice. In discussions so far we have both been convinced that our respective suggestions are better and fairer for those who live in rural areas and scattered districts, but, as we are both agreed that special arrangements have to be made for rural areas, it must be possible to reach agreement.
A similar situation applies to deprived inner-city areas. I have been proposing extra capitation for those who practise in deprived areas because, again, general practitioners there cannot build up their lists. There has been no pressure in our contract proposals on any general practitioner with average or near-average lists to raise his list size, which is a fear that has been voiced. Other fears can also be met in discussion.
I was asked about the position of women practitioners by my hon. Friends the Members for Newbury and for Gloucester and by Opposition Members. The nature of general practice will change in many ways. One is that many more practitioners will be women. More than half


the students in our medical schools now are women and we must accept that equal opportunities must be presented to all women who go into general practice, including those who will have family responsibilities at some time or another. The contract proposals are friendly to women seeking to enter general practice.
The notion of job sharing is floated in my proposals, as is the idea of part-time women being full principals in a practice. Therefore, the differences between me and my negotiators on the one hand and some women general practitioners on the other are not differences of aim; they are based on what I regard as an unusual interpretation of some of the changes that we are making to basic practice allowance. I am prepared to talk through a contract which in the end will encourage more women to go into practice and accept a desirable change in the contract.
I mention those matters not to trail any further what we might discuss, but to make it clear that discussions were broken off only because the BMA asked for that. The BMA carried out a leaflet campaign and held its conference, and, as far as I am concerned, discussions can now be resumed. My proposals were evolved after 12 months of detailed discussions, but they were plainly open to further discussions. That is the way that we should proceed. If both sides show common sense and are genuinely committed to a better NHS, raising standards of general practice and improving service to the patient, it should be possible to reach agreement. The remuneration of individual general practitioners should not be the great stumbling block to progress. Other reforms should not be regarded as sanctions where consent can be withheld unless a proper deal on the contract is arrived at.
The contract should now be resolved by sensible discussion, and further examination of the White Paper will reveal what my hon. Friends have all said has been revealed in sensible discussions with small groups of doctors throughout Britain—that, on balance, almost all agree that it is beneficial. When details are explained, most general practitioners will agree that. As we proceed with the implementation, it will be seen that this is just the next step in the Government's commitment to a better NHS, a free NHS financed out of taxation, and one that keeps up with the times to deliver the best of modern medical practice to patients who will he proud of it in the future.

Question put, That the original words stand part of the Question:—

The House divided: Ayes 181, Noes 279.

Division No. 182]
[7.05 pm


AYES


Abbott, Ms Diane
Bray, Dr Jeremy


Alton, David
Brown, Gordon (D'mline E)


Anderson, Donald
Brown, Nicholas (Newcastle E)


Archer, Rt Hon Peter
Brown, Ron (Edinburgh Leith)


Armstrong, Hilary
Bruce, Malcolm (Gordon)


Ashley, Rt Hon Jack
Buchan, Norman


Ashton, Joe
Buckley, George J.


Banks, Tony (Newham NW)
Caborn, Richard


Barnes, Harry (Derbyshire NE)
Campbell, Menzies (Fife NE)


Barnes, Mrs Rosie (Greenwich)
Campbell-Savours, D. N.


Barron, Kevin
Cartwright, John


Battle, John
Clarke, Tom (Monklands W)


Beckett, Margaret
Clay, Bob


Beggs, Roy
Cohen, Harry


Bell, Stuart
Coleman, Donald


Benn, Rt Hon Tony
Cook, Frank (Stockton N)


Bermingham, Gerald
Cook, Robin (Livingston)


Bidwell, Sydney
Corbett, Robin


Blunkett, David
Corbyn, Jeremy





Cousins, Jim
McWilliam, John


Crowther, Stan
Madden, Max


Cryer, Bob
Mahon, Mrs Alice


Cummings, John
Marek, Dr John


Cunliffe, Lawrence
Marshall, Jim (Leicester S)


Dalyell, Tam
Martin, Michael J. (Springburn)


Darling, Alistair
Martlew, Eric


Davies, Rt Hon Denzil (Llanelli)
Meacher, Michael


Davis, Terry (B'ham Hodge H'I)
Michie, Bill (Sheffield Heeley)


Dixon, Don
Michie, Mrs Ray (Arg'l &amp; Bute)


Dobson, Frank
Mitchell, Austin (G't Grimsby)


Doran, Frank
Morley, Elliott


Douglas, Dick
Morris, Rt Hon A. (W'shawe)


Dunnachie, Jimmy
Morris, Rt Hon J. (Aberavon)


Eadie, Alexander
Mowlam, Marjorie


Eastham, Ken
Mullin, Chris


Evans, John (St Helens N)
Murphy, Paul


Ewing, Mrs Margaret (Moray)
Nellist, Dave


Fatchett, Derek
Oakes, Rt Hon Gordon


Faulds, Andrew
O'Brien, William


Fearn, Ronald
Orme, Rt Hon Stanley


Field, Frank (Birkenhead)
Patchett, Terry


Fields, Terry (L'pool B G'n)
Pendry, Tom


Fisher, Mark
Pike, Peter L.


Flannery, Martin
Powell, Ray (Ogmore)


Foot, Rt Hon Michael
Prescott, John


Foster, Derek
Primarolo, Dawn


Fraser, John
Quin, Ms Joyce


Fyfe, Maria
Radice, Giles


Galbraith, Sam
Randall, Stuart


Galloway, George
Rees, Rt Hon Merlyn


Garrett, John (Norwich South)
Richardson, Jo


Garrett, Ted (Wallsend)
Roberts, Allan (Bootle)


Godman, Dr Norman A.
Robertson, George


Gordon, Mildred
Robinson, Geoffrey


Gould, Bryan
Rogers, Allan


Griffiths, Nigel (Edinburgh S)
Ross, Ernie (Dundee W)


Griffiths, Win (Bridgend)
Ruddock, Joan


Grocott, Bruce
Sedgemore, Brian


Hardy, Peter
Sheerman, Barry


Harman, Ms Harriet
Sheldon, Rt Hon Robert


Hattersley, Rt Hon Roy
Shore, Rt Hon Peter


Hinchliffe, David
Short, Clare


Hogg, N. (C'nauld &amp; Kilsyth)
Sillars, Jim


Holland, Stuart
Skinner, Dennis


Home Robertson, John
Smith, Andrew (Oxford E)


Howarth, George (Knowsley N)
Smith, Rt Hon J. (Monk'ds E)


Howells, Dr. Kim (Pontypridd)
Soley, Clive


Hughes, John (Coventry NE)
Spearing, Nigel


Hughes, Robert (Aberdeen N)
Steinberg, Gerry


Hughes, Simon (Southwark)
Stott, Roger


Ingram, Adam
Strang, Gavin


Janner, Greville
Straw, Jack


Jones, Ieuan (Ynys Môn)
Taylor, Mrs Ann (Dewsbury)


Jones, Martyn (Clwyd S W)
Taylor, Matthew (Truro)


Kinnock, Rt Hon Neil
Thompson, Jack (Wansbeck)


Kirkwood, Archy
Turner, Dennis


Lambie, David
Vaz, Keith


Lamond, James
Wall, Pat


Leighton, Ron
Wallace, James


Lestor, Joan (Eccles)
Warden, Gareth (Gower)


Lewis, Terry
Wareing, Robert N.


Litherland, Robert
Welsh, Andrew (Angus E)


Livsey, Richard
Wigley, Dafydd


Lloyd, Tony (Stretford)
Williams, Rt Hon Alan


McAllion, John
Wilson, Brian


McAvoy, Thomas
Winnick, David


Macdonald, Calum A.
Worthington, Tony


McFall, John
Wray, Jimmy


McKay, Allen (Barnsley West)



McKelvey, William
Tellers for the Ayes:


McLeish, Henry
Mr. Frank Haynes and


Maclennan, Robert
Mrs. Llin Golding.


McNamara, Kevin



NOES


Aitken, Jonathan
Amos, Alan


Alexander, Richard
Arbuthnot, James


Allason, Rupert
Arnold, Jacques (Gravesham)


Amess, David
Ashby, David






Atkins, Robert
French, Douglas


Baker, Rt Hon K. (Mole Valley)
Gale, Roger


Baker, Nicholas (Dorset N)
Gardiner, George


Baldry, Tony
Garel-Jones, Tristan


Banks, Robert (Harrogate)
Gill, Christopher


Beaumont-Dark, Anthony
Gilmour, Rt Hon Sir Ian


Bellingham, Henry
Glyn, Dr Alan


Bendall, Vivian
Goodhart, Sir Philip


Bennett, Nicholas (Pembroke)
Goodson-Wickes, Dr Charles


Benyon, W.
Gorman, Mrs Teresa


Blackburn, Dr John G.
Gow, Ian


Blaker, Rt Hon Sir Peter
Grant, Sir Anthony (CambsSW)


Body, Sir Richard
Green way, Harry (Ealing N)


Bonsor, Sir Nicholas
Greenway, John (Ryedale)


Boscawen, Hon Robert
Gregory, Conal


Boswell, Tim
Griffiths, Peter (Portsmouth N)


Bottomley, Mrs Virginia
Grist, Ian


Bowden, A (Brighton K'pto'n)
Ground, Patrick


Bowden, Gerald (Dulwich)
Grylls, Michael


Bowis, John
Gummer, Rt Hon John Selwyn


Boyson, Rt Hon Dr Sir Rhodes
Hague, William


Brandon-Bravo, Martin
Hamilton, Hon Archie (Epsom)


Brazier, Julian
Hamilton, Neil (Tatton)


Bright, Graham
Hanley, Jeremy


Brown, Michael (Brigg &amp; Cl't's)
Hannam, John


Browne, John (Winchester)
Harris, David


Bruce, Ian (Dorset South)
Haselhurst, Alan


Buchanan-Smith, Rt Hon Alick
Hawkins, Christopher


Buck, Sir Antony
Hayes, Jerry


Budgen, Nicholas
Hayward, Robert


Burns, Simon
Heseltine, Rt Hon Michael


Burt, Alistair
Hicks, Mrs Maureen (Wolv' NE)


Butler, Chris
Higgins, Rt Hon Terence L.


Butterfill, John
Hill, James


Carlisle, John, (Luton N)
Hind, Kenneth


Carlisle, Kenneth (Lincoln)
Holt, Richard


Carrington, Matthew
Howarth, Alan (Strat'd-on-A)


Carttiss, Michael
Howarth, G. (Cannock &amp; B'wd)


Cash, William
Howe, Rt Hon Sir Geoffrey


Channon, Rt Hon Paul
Hughes, Robert G. (Harrow W)


Chapman, Sydney
Hunt, David (Wirral W)


Chope, Christopher
Irvine, Michael


Clark, Hon Alan (Plym'th S'n)
Irving, Charles


Clark, Dr Michael (Rochford)
Jack, Michael


Clarke, Rt Hon K. (Rushcliffe)
Janman, Tim


Colvin, Michael
Jessel, Toby


Conway, Derek
Johnson Smith, Sir Geoffrey


Coombs, Anthony (Wyre F'rest)
Jones, Robert B (Herts W)


Coombs, Simon (Swindon)
Jopling, Rt Hon Michael


Cope, Rt Hon John
Kellett-Bowman, Dame Elaine


Couchman, James
Kirkhope, Timothy


Cran, James
Knapman, Roger


Critchley, Julian
Knight, Greg (Derby North)


Currie, Mrs Edwina
Knight, Dame Jill (Edgbaston)


Curry, David
Knowles, Michael


Davies, Q. (Stamf'd &amp; Spald'g)
Knox, David


Davis, David (Boothferry)
Lamont, Rt Hon Norman


Devlin, Tim
Lang, Ian


Dickens, Geoffrey
Latham, Michael


Dorrell, Stephen
Lawrence, Ivan


Douglas-Hamilton, Lord James
Lawson, Rt Hon Nigel


Dover, Den
Lee, John (Pendle)


Dunn, Bob
Lennox-Boyd, Hon Mark


Durant, Tony
Lester, Jim (Broxtowe)


Dykes, Hugh
Lightbown, David


Eggar, Tim
Lilley, Peter


Evennett, David
Lloyd, Peter (Fareham)


Fallon, Michael
Lord, Michael


Favell, Tony
Luce, Rt Hon Richard


Fenner, Dame Peggy
Lyell, Sir Nicholas


Field, Barry (Isle of Wight)
McCrindle, Robert


Fishburn, John Dudley
Macfarlane, Sir Neil


Fookes, Dame Janet
MacGregor, Rt Hon John


Forman, Nigel
MacKay, Andrew (E Berkshire)


Forsyth, Michael (Stirling)
Maclean, David


Forth, Eric
McLoughlin, Patrick


Fowler, Rt Hon Norman
McNair-Wilson, Sir Michael


Fox, Sir Marcus
McNair-Wilson, P. (New Forest)


Freeman, Roger
Major, Rt Hon John





Malins, Humfrey
Sims, Roger


Mans, Keith
Skeet, Sir Trevor


Marlow, Tony
Smith, Tim (Beaconsfield)


Marshall, Michael (Arundel)
Soames, Hon Nicholas


Martin, David (Portsmouth S)
Speller, Tony


Mates, Michael
Spicer, Sir Jim (Dorset W)


Maude, Hon Francis
Spicer, Michael (S Worcs)


Mayhew, Rt Hon Sir Patrick
Squire, Robin


Mellor, David
Stanbrook, Ivor


Meyer, Sir Anthony
Stanley, Rt Hon Sir John


Miller, Sir Hal
Steen, Anthony


Mills, Iain
Stern, Michael


Miscampbell, Norman
Stevens, Lewis


Mitchell, Andrew (Gedling)
Stewart, Allan (Eastwood)


Mitchell, Sir David
Stewart, Andy (Sherwood)


Moate, Roger
Stokes, Sir John


Monro, Sir Hector
Stradling Thomas, Sir John


Montgomery, Sir Fergus
Sumberg, David


Moore, Rt Hon John
Summerson, Hugo


Morrison, Sir Charles
Taylor, Ian (Esher)


Morrison, Rt Hon P (Chester)
Taylor, Teddy (S'end E)


Moynihan, Hon Colin
Tebbit, Rt Hon Norman


Neale, Gerrard
Temple-Morris, Peter


Nelson, Anthony
Thompson, D. (Calder Valley)


Neubert, Michael
Thompson, Patrick (Norwich N)


Nicholson, David (Taunton)
Thorne, Neil


Onslow, Rt Hon Cranley
Thornton, Malcolm


Oppenheim, Phillip
Thurnham, Peter


Page, Richard
Townend, John (Bridlington)


Paice, James
Townsend, Cyril D. (B'heath)


Patnick, Irvine
Tracey, Richard


Patten, John (Oxford W)
Trippier, David


Pawsey, James
Twinn, Dr Ian


Peacock, Mrs Elizabeth
Vaughan, Sir Gerard


Porter, Barry (Wirral S)
Viggers, Peter


Porter, David (Waveney)
Waddington, Rt Hon David


Portillo, Michael
Waldegrave, Hon William


Powell, William (Corby)
Walden, George


Price, Sir David
Walker, Bill (T'side North)


Raison, Rt Hon Timothy
Waller, Gary


Rathbone, Tim
Walters, Sir Dennis


Redwood, John
Ward, John


Renton, Tim
Wardle, Charles (Bexhill)


Rhodes James, Robert
Warren, Kenneth


Riddick, Graham
Wells, Bowen


Ridsdale, Sir Julian
Whitney, Ray


Roberts, Wyn (Conwy)
Widdecombe, Ann


Rossi, Sir Hugh
Wiggin, Jerry


Rowe, Andrew
Wilshire, David


Rumbold, Mrs Angela
Winterton, Mrs Ann


Ryder, Richard
Wolfson, Mark


Sackville, Hon Tom
Wood, Timothy


Sayeed, Jonathan
Woodcock, Mike


Shaw, David (Dover)
Young, Sir George (Acton)


Shaw, Sir Giles (Pudsey)



Shaw, Sir Michael (Scarb')
Tellers for the Moes:


Shephard, Mrs G. (Norfolk SW)
Mr. John M. Taylor and


Shepherd, Richard (Aldridge)
Mr. David Heathcoat-Amory


Shersby, Michael

Question accordingly negatived.

Question, That the proposed words be there added, put forthwith pursuant to Standing Order No. 30 (Questions on amendments), and agreed to.

Mr. Deputy Speaker forthwith declared the main Question, as amended, to be agreed to.

Resolved,
That this House welcomes the widespread medical support for the objectives of the White Paper "Working for Patients" and believes that the proposals in that White Paper will enable the health service and individual doctors to respond better to the needs and wishes of patients, extend patient choice, delegate responsibility to where the services are provided and secure the best value for money; affirms its support for the basic principles of the National Health Service which will be strengthened by the early implementation of the White Paper proposals; and looks forward to the constructive contributions from medical organisations to achieve that.

Teacher Shortages

Mr. Jack Straw: I beg to move,
That this House, noting the widespread evidence from Her Majesty's Inspectorate, local education authorities, and many others, of severe and ever growing teacher shortages in many parts of the country, and in many subjects, and a low teacher morale across the country, condemns Her Majesty's Government for its complacency and its failure to take effective measures to reduce teacher shortages, or to raise the morale of the teaching profession, without which the delivery of the national curriculum educational standards and the provision of greater opportunities for children may be put at grave risk.
The quality of education that children receive can only be as good as the teachers who provide it. That has been true at all times, but the need for teachers to be of the highest quality has never been greater than it is today.
After 10 years of the present Government standards of education have faltered, as last year's Select Committee report showed. We are losing out internationally: Britain now spends a lower proportion of its national wealth on education than it did a decade ago. Capital spending dropped by 27 per cent. between 1981 and 1988. Central Government current investment in education has been cut by 18 per cent. in real terms, leaving local authorities and ratepayers to make up the difference. There is a £3 billion backlog of repairs. Half our children are educated in sub-standard accommodation, a quarter in classrooms so bad that the physical conditions are affecting their education. Fewer than one in three of our 16-year-olds stay on in full-time education, compared with two in three in France, Japan and the United States.
After 10 years of neglect by the Government there is an overwhelming need to raise standards of education and achievement, especially for the 80 per cent. of pupils who do not follow the A-level route to university or to a first degree. That is challenge enough for our teaching force, but on top of that challenge—and the challenge that teachers have already had to meet with GCSE—come the new demands for even greater skill and dedication: the demands requiring teachers to cope with the local management of schools, which will alter fundamentally the way in which schools are administered, and the demands on them to cope with the national curriculum and the associated systems of assessment and testing.
That is the challenge; what is the reality? The reality today is a teacher supply crisis. In many areas and many subjects, there are not enough properly qualified teachers in post. In some areas there are not even enough teachers, and children are having to be sent home. With the present policies, the crisis will become worse as the demographic time bomb explodes. The age group from which new young teachers are recruited will decline by 25 per cent. between now and 1995. On some estimates, the percentage of new graduates needed in teaching would have to rise from 11 per cent. today to 30 per cent. in five years' time just to meet the demand for new teachers. While the available pool of new teachers shrinks, the school population will rise.
No one, I believe, disagrees with the claim that teacher supply is in crisis. Wastage is so high that, as the interim advisory committee on teachers' pay has commented, 3,000 newly qualified teachers do not go into teaching at

all; and, on the Minister of State's own figures, 28 per cent. of those who do—nearly three in 10—leave within five years and stay out of teaching altogether.
Evidence of the teacher supply crisis comes—yes—from the Government's opponents. It comes from the teaching unions, from Labour local authorities and from the parliamentary Labour party, which conducted its own survey of teacher shortages. But it also comes from those whose job is to advise the Government—from the interim advisory committee on teachers' pay, under the chairmanship of Lord Chilver, from Her Majesty's inspectorate and from Conservative local education authorities. It also comes from those who represent a group that the Government claim to be empowering—parents—and from the daily experience of any of us who visit state schools and talk to those in them who are responsible for delivering the curriculum.
The evidence is overwhelming. The interim advisory committee report said that recruitment was
worryingly below the Secretary of State's own target for secondary courses in mathematics, science, technology and (to a lesser extent) modern languages…We recognise that there are currently a range of initiatives underway to tackle these difficulties, but the task remains enormous…We continue to be impressed by teachers' commitment and their high professional standards; but morale appears to he as low as we judged it to be last year.
Then there is the evidence of Her Majesty's inspectorate in the report "Standards in Education". The report says:
primary education is critically short of teachers with expertise in science, technology and mathematics.
On secondary schools, the report says:
In areas where the cost of living is highest, such as the inner and outer London Boroughs and the home counties, recruiting teachers is an ever-growing problem and some schools are becoming more and more dependent on probationary and temporary teachers. Specialist teacher shortages are most severe in mathematics, science and craft, design and technology (CDT).
The Elton report made a similar point about the problems of low motivation and shortages.
And so it goes on. I understand that no one has told the Select Committee in its recent inquiry that teacher shortages are not causing a problem: no one, that is, except the Government. The response of the Minister of State to all that evidence arid more has been to describe it as a myth. Speaking to the Secondary Heads Association conference two weeks ago, the Minister said:
We really do need…to nail this myth that teaching has difficulty in securing recruits and in retaining them when it does secure them.
Let me ask the Minister a few questions about that myth. Did Her Majesty's inspectorate and the interim advisory committee invent their conclusions? Why—as a withering editorial in last week's Times Educational Supplement asked—are there 20 per cent. more job advertisements in the TES Than there were at this time last year? As the paper commented:
If there is no shortage, there is certainly a remarkably energetic hunt for teachers to make good the shortage which doesn't exist.
What about the evidence from the Prime Minister's London borough of Barnet? A report from the chief education officer shows a near trebling of resignations in the past seven years. In secondary education the number of teachers resigning has risen from 7 per cent. six years ago to 18 per cent. last year, and in primary education it has risen from 5 per cent. six years ago to 14 per cent. last year.

Mr. James Pawsey: If the position is as the hon. Gentleman describes, will he come out firmly in favour of licensed teachers in his speech?

Mr. Straw: No. I shall explain to the hon. Gentleman exactly why I do not believe that lowering standards for teachers will solve the problems.
The report from the Prime Minister's own Conservative authority spells out just what great strains the shortages are imposing on teachers in the borough, and how they are reflected in shortages in other Conservative boroughs such as Harrow, Havering and Redbridge—shortages that in many instances are as bad as, or worse than, those in Labour authorities.
What about the figures that show consistently that the Government have failed to hit the targets that they have set for recruitment to training in shortage subjects? According to the interim advisory committee, the number of applicants for mathematics courses last year was down to 27 per cent. below the target. For physics the figure was 23 per cent., for CDT 21 per cent., for modern languages 13 per cent. and for chemistry 42 per cent. Yet the Minister of State tells us that the shortages are all a myth.
Let me quote the latest figures from the graduate teacher training registry comparing this year's applicants with last year's. They show a 2 per cent. decline in applicants for biology, a 17 per cent. decline for mathematics and a 24 per cent. decline for physics.

Mr. Ian Taylor: Does the hon. Gentlemen agree that the shortages to which he has referred are essentially a regional problem, as is shown by the written answer reported in column 326 of Hansard on 20 January 1989? As they are a regional problem, does the hon. Gentleman agree with regional pay bargaining?

Mr. Straw: No, I do not. If Conservative Members read the IAC reports for this year and last year, they will see that the committee, under the chairmanship of the Conservative Lord Chilver, considered that question and came down against regional pay for reasons which they set out.
If there is no problem—if it is all a myth—why are private schools now facing teacher shortages for the first time? Why is the Secretary of State agreeing that city technology colleges should pay their teachers 5 per cent. more than national pay scales, simply to recruit teachers?
The Minister of State says that it is all a myth. However, the Secretary of State is not that crude; his line has been different. He says that there has been a slight problem. However, in another orgy of self-congratulation, he claims to be tackling the problem with vigorous and effective measures. As ever, these measures are principally cosmetic. Of course, we should expect no more than cosmetics from a man who once worked as a consultant to Avon Cosmetics Limited. The hon. Member for Rugby and Kenilworth (Mr. Pawsey) looks embarrassed, but it is a fact that the Secretary of State once worked for Avon Cosmetics. That occupation fits the man, because most of the measures that he has brought forward are cosmetic and will not solve the problem.
There are major shortages of teachers in many parts of the country and in many subjects, and the position will get worse. On the best assumptions of the Secretary of State's own Department there will be a shortfall of 1,000 maths teachers, 1,500 physics teachers, 2,000 chemistry teachers, 2,000 music teachers, 2,500 modern language teachers, and

6,000 teachers of craft, design and technology. Since those shortages will not be evenly spread, but will be concentrated, in some respects randomly, in particular schools and particular areas, the figures from the Secretary of State's own Department mean that in some schools there will not be sufficient teachers to deliver key subjects of the national curriculum.

Mr. Tony Lloyd: The hon. Member for Esher (Mr. Taylor) intervened about shortages. Does the experience of my hon. Friend confirm my own, which is that inevitably, in inner city areas, even outside the south-east—and we accept that there is a particular shortage problem in the south-east—because teaching is more difficult and demoralising, shortages are beginning to appear at a high level in Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds and so on?

Mr. Straw: I accept what my hon. Friend says, but I also make the point that shortages, as the Labour party's survey showed, are spreading across subjects and across the country. The figures I have quoted from the Department's evidence to the Select Committee on Education, Science and Arts are almost certainly an underestimate of the likely shortages by 1995, based, as they are, on unsupportable assumptions, such as a 20 per cent. increase in target levels in training for physics, maths, technology, and modern languages, when the existing targets of 20 per cent. below that have never been reached except in one subject in one year in the past three years.
To all these problems, the Secretary of State has no effective policy response for his proposal for licensed teachers. That proposal raises the greatest suspicion that the Government will solve the problem of teacher shortages by bringing in sub-standard teachers on the cheap. I have made it clear that we favour a number of methods of entry to teacher training. None of us believes that the present structure of B Eds and postgraduate certificates of education should last for ever. If it is accepted that a high quality profession is needed to meet the challenges of the 1990s, it is madness to depress the standards and level of qualification below the graduate standard which has so painstakingly been reached for entry into the profession.

Mr. Nicholas Bennett: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that for many years local education authorities have employed instructors who have not had the same academic qualifications as qualified teachers? They have employed instructors in CDT, home economics and other spheres who have been excellent teachers. As a result of using these people, we have been able to staff many departments. Will the hon. Gentleman not insult these people?

Mr. Straw: Of course, I am aware that the local authorities have had instructors, but no one has pretended, least of all the instructors, that they are qualified graduate teachers. What is now proposed is that people who are instructors, as it were, should become qualified graduate teachers without training. We have not had from this Government proposals for licensed doctors or nurses, but apparently the education—not of the children of the Secretary of State or of Cabinet members—of our children is to be left to people who are underqualified or unqualified.
I ask the Secretary of State whether the licensed teacher system will produce teachers of graduate status and standard. If so, will the teachers get a degree, and who will validate it? How will the system operate? This afternoon, I asked the Parliamentary Under-Secretary, "Since the Secretary of State has said that all that is needed to go on to this licensed teacher scheme is a two-year experience of higher education, does that not mean that someone who has been in college for two years, following a Bachelor of Education or a PGCE but has failed his teaching practice, may be admitted to a licensed teacher scheme?" The Minister could not answer the question this afternoon, but perhaps the Secretary of State can answer it this evening.

Mr. George Howarth: Does my hon. Friend agree that, instead of looking at this licensing system, perhaps the Secretary of State might look at a suggestion made by one of my constituents who is a teacher-trainer and who suggests that, instead of having one intake on PGCE courses in a year, there should be two intakes, one in the summer and one midway through the year, so that the supply of trained teachers could be increased considerably within any given year?

Mr. Straw: That is the kind of suggestion which the Government should examine to introduce greater flexibility, with different entry routes into teaching but the same graduate exit route. Reference has been made to licensed teacher status. I will quote the favourite teacher trade union of the Secretary of State—not the National Union of Teachers, the National Association of Schoolmasters/Union of Women Teachers or the Assistant Masters and Mistresses Association, but the Professional Association of Teachers whose general secretary, Mr. Peter Dawson, wrote to me about the licensed teacher scheme and authorised me to quote from his letter. He wrote:
My comment concerns the introduction of licensed teachers. We think the proposals might very well help to overcome teacher shortages, if only we knew what they were. Time and time again, we have raised with Kenneth Baker the question of where the training is actually to come in on-the-job training arrangements. No kind of answer that makes any sense has yet been received. One is left with the impression that it is not so much on-the-job training that we are going to get but on-the-job sinking or swimming. Writing government policy on the back of a menu over dinner is all very well, but it does call for further thought next morning … We are still waiting for Kenneth Baker to complete his licensed teacher proposals. Perhaps he has forgotten.
I hope that the Secretary of State will provide us with a bit more detail about how the licensed teacher scheme will operate and whether it will produce teachers of a graduate standard. If they are to be graduates, will they get degrees and how will they be validated?
For about four months, I have been pressing the Secretary of State to publish the secondary schools staffing survey. After a number of parliamentary questions, he promised that it would be made available at the end of April. It was made available at 6.15 this evening. I am not surprised that the Secretary of State has done his best to sit on it, because the secondary staffing survey of 1988 shows that the situation, compared with 1974, is worsening. It shows that the proportion of teachers teaching their particular subjects who do not have a post A-level qualification in that subject has increased since 1984 from 51 to 53 per cent. In details about long-term absences, it shows that, in the survey week, 55 per cent. of schools were affected by long-term teacher absences, on top of 96 per

cent. affected by short-term teacher absence. Of those absences the principal cause was not, as Conservative Members have pretended, that teachers were undertaking in-service training courses, which accounted for only 32 per cent. In fact, 70 per cent. were absent for other reasons. The other reasons are not given, and perhaps the Secretary of State has more details, but I suggest that the other reasons have to do with teacher shortages. The survey also shows that, in the survey week, 52 per cent. of schools were affected by vacancies.
The Government's record on teachers has been one of complacency, neglect and abuse. Pay is by no means everything but, as the interim advisory committee said, it is doubtful whether the pay level it recommended, constrained as it was by the Treasury, would
secure the requisite degree of motivation among the generality of teachers at this crucial time.
The dedication of teachers is high, but morale is low and has not been helped by the Secretary of State's refusal so far to restore collective bargaining rights to teacher unions.
There is, however, a central problem that goes beyond pay and conditions. It lies at the heart of the teacher shortage crisis. Teachers are not valued by the Government. Instead, teachers have been used as an easy butt. They have been used and abused by the Conservative Right as a convenient excuse for explaining away the Government's failure to invest in our children.
Take, for example, the now notorious letter to local education authorities from the Department of Education and Science, giving them advice on who should be invited to the Buckingham palace reception and garden party to celebrate 150 years of state education. The letter said:
They must be people likely to behave properly and bring credit to their particular aspect of the education service.
When all this came out—but not before—the Secretary of State said that he had not written the letter but that he regretted it. He did not say that he was sorry; he said that he regretted it.

Mr. Nicholas Bennett: Are they not the same thing?

Mr. Straw: No, they are not.
The Secretary of State is responsible for the generation of the climate in which, to quote the report of his own chief inspector:
too many teachers feel that their profession and its work are misjudged and seriously undervalued.
The Secretary of State says that teacher shortages are a myth and that his measures are effective.
Let me read finally from a letter that I received last week from a constituent. It says:
Dear Mr. Straw,
I thought that you might be interested to learn that my husband and I will be taking up teaching posts
abroad
from 1st September 1989. We are both regarded as valuable and experienced members of staff in our respective schools, but have found the deteriorating conditions, the increasing workloads and paltry pay rises unacceptable. Between us we have almost thirty years experience, but can see no way forward … We are not moving for the money
but
our conditions of service will be far superior and we think that our efforts will be better appreciated. At least we will not have to listen to Baker constantly telling us how incompetent and inadequate we are!

Mr. Nicholas Bennett: Where are they going?

Mr. Straw: They are going to teach in the Third world —in the Dominican Republic. They happen to believe that their conditions in the Dominican Republic will be better than they are in Bradford.
There are serious teacher shortages. There is a crisis of recruitment, retention and morale of good quality teachers. That crisis can and will only get worse until we have a Government who are committed to our state education service and who are willing properly to invest in this nation's children—our future.

The Secretary of State for Education and Science (Mr. Kenneth Baker): I beg to move, to leave out from "House" to the end of the Question and to add instead thereof:
`notes the importance of recruiting sufficient well qualified teachers, in particular for the implementation of the national curriculum; welcomes the vigorous measures which the Government has introduced to this end; welcomes the clear indication of the success of these measures; welcomes the measures the Government is taking to make teacher training more rigorous, more practical and more responsive to the needs of schools; and commends the Government's intention to continue to take whatever action is needed to ensure a continuing supply of high quality teachers.'.
I welcome this debate. I am glad to have this opportunity to put on record what we have done, what we are doing and what we intend to do to counter the problem of teacher shortages.
First, I should like to pay tribute to the teaching profession and to the many good teachers that we have in our schools. Theirs is a responsible and challenging job. Teaching is not easy. Not everybody can do it. However, teaching is an attractive and rewarding career. That is why people are coming forward in increasing numbers to train as teachers. That is why we have many first-class teachers in our schools. I am confident that all hon. Members will want to join me in paying tribute to them.
I listened carefully to the speech of the hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr. Straw), but, as far as I am aware, he made no concrete suggestion for dealing with the shortage that he delineated. I shall therefore start with a few facts. There are more teachers relative to pupils than ever before. The overall pupil to teacher ratio, at 17:1, is at its lowest ever. The proportion of large classes has come down over the last 10 years. The proportion of pupils taught in classes of 31 or more has fallen by nearly 12 percentage points in primary schools and by nearly 9 percentage points in secondary schools. Some 25,000 teachers enter or re-enter the profession each year. Less than 1 per cent. of teachers leave the profession for other paid employment.
Recruitment to initial teacher training was a record in 1988—up by 5 per cent. over 1987. In primary, it was particularly good—12 per cent. up. The level of applications for initial training, starting in September of this year, is even higher. In primary it is up by 14 per cent. over the same time in 1988. In secondary, it is also up—by 1 per cent. Another indication of the popularity of teaching is that 10 per cent. of all graduates qualify as teachers.
The background—the overall picture—is encouraging. There is no shortage of people wanting to be teachers, yet there are teacher shortages in certain areas and in certain subjects, particularly maths and science. I must tell the House that there has never been a sufficient number of good, well-qualified teachers of maths and science. Even

10 years ago, when there were some 9,000 unemployed teachers, there were not enough maths and science teachers.
The problem is not, however, confined to teaching. The engineering and electronics industries complain of shortages of people with maths and science qualifications. As fast as the education system can produce such people, they are snapped up. We need to increase the number of young people leaving school who are educated to advanced level in maths and science subjects. Anybody who has read Corelli Barnett's "The Audit of War" will know that that is a long-term and enduring problem that has affected our country for the better part of this century. It is something to which I know all hon. Members will wish to give the highest priority.
That is why the national curriculum is so important. In future, every youngster will have to take science—which will include physics and chemistry, not just biology—and technology up to the age of 16. Many more youngsters than now will have the opportunity to go on to A-levels and AS-levels, which makes it even more important to ensure that our schools get the teachers that they need.
I hope the House recognises from what I have said that the question of teacher supply is a complex one. It is also of fundamental importance.
Of course I realise that the overall figures that I have given—the global picture—are of little comfort when a particular school cannot find a particular teacher to teach a particular subject. I accept that. Three years ago, therefore, I set out my proposals for an action programme. The hon. Member for Blackburn asked me whether I am tackling the problem of teacher shortages. Clearly it does not suit his purpose to take yes for an answer. I remind the House that I have backed up the action programme that I set up over three years ago with expenditure, so far, of over £50 million.
Since I launched the action programme, the regional dimension of teacher shortages has changed. I think that hon. Members in all parts of the House now recognise that fact. It was recognised during the interventions in the speech of the hon. Member for Blackburn. There are particular problems in recruiting both secondary and primary teachers in London and the south-east. In my memorandum to the Select Committee, I showed how I was taking action to counter the problems as they developed.

Mr. Martin Flannery: The right hon. Gentleman has just told us about an action programme that he set up three years ago. I am on the Select Committee to which he referred. Why is it that every group that gave evidence to the Select Committee here and every group that gave evidence to us when we made visits described the shortage as a looming crisis? Will he explain why there is such a crisis after putting in hand an action programme? In three years it ought surely to have borne some fruit.

Mr. Baker: May I ask the hon. Gentleman to wait for a few moments? I shall answer his question when I deal with the action programmes that I have put in hand and with the ones that I intend to put in hand.
This is a serious issue. I am sometimes accused of being complacent, of doing nothing. That is an uncharacteristic


accusation to level against me. I am not known for doing nothing. I brought the issue on to the public agenda, I am taking action, and I shall continue to take action.
May I deal with the five specific areas where I have taken action, or where I shall be taking action? The first relates to the number of new places for initial teacher training. Last Friday, I announced that the intake numbers to initial teacher training courses for 1990–91 in England and Wales would be increased. There will be an extra 2,000 places in 1990 over and above 1989.
As regards the spread of those increases, there is an overall increase of 9½ per cent. above the 1989 target, 34 per cent. in modern languages, 15 per cent. in science, 10 per cent. in craft, design and technology and 11 per cent. in maths. This means the teacher training institutions will have the money to recruit and train more students in these subjects. We have also set aside 450 places for new ideas for types of courses in modern languages, music and chemistry. We did this in 1987 and 1988 for new courses in science and maths, which has led to some new good ideas for courses aimed at new target groups of students.
The first need, as I think is recognised, is to attract new young people into the teaching profession. Apart from increasing the number of teaching places in 1990, to reinforce the attractions of teaching in the shortage subjects I introduced the bursary scheme. The bursary is tax-free, non-means-tested and is now worth £1,300. It is available for those students who wish to take a postgraduate certificate of education course—that is, one year extra at college—after they have graduated. The scheme was originally for trainees in maths, physics and CDT, and it has been successful in reversing the declining trend of recruitment to these declining subjects.
In 1985, there was a clear decline in CDT, and there were just 452 people coming forward for PGCE. That is now up to 764. The total in these three subjects—maths, physics and CDT—was about 1,685; it is now 2,400 a year. This shows that these bursaries are attractive, as one would expect.

Mr. Simon Hughes: Does the Secretary of State not accept, however, that the bursary scheme has been of minimal impact, not least because in some of the areas where it was intended to act as a remedy—for example, physics—it has fallen far below its target of achievement, as the Secretary of State and his Ministers have accepted across the Dispatch Box in this House?

Mr. Baker: It arrested a decline. There was a rapid decline in these three subjects. Taking physics, the figure in 1985 was 273; in 1988, it was 456. I am not satisfied with that figure. We need more teachers in these areas, so earlier this year I extended the scheme to chemistry. When I made my announcement on 27 January applications for chemistry were 27 per cent. down over the same time last year. The House, I know, will welcome the news that applications are now 5 per cent. up over this time last year. This is a considerable improvement. It shows that my bursary scheme is working, and there is little doubt that without it there would be far fewer students in shortage areas.
I turn now to mismatch, which I know is recognised by members of the Select Committee. By that I mean teachers trained in one subject teaching another—teachers of biology, for example, teaching physics or perhaps teachers

of maths taking computer studies. Some examples of mismatch are more serious than others. However, there is no doubt that there arc too many teachers of some subjects and not enough of others. This is brought out well in the staffing survey which I published this evening, from which the hon. Member for Blackburn quoted, and he is quite right that mismatch has increased slightly between 1984 and 1988.
However, the survey indicates that the increase was not due to an aggregate shortfall in teacher supply, or to a fall in teachers with qualifications in shortage subjects; figures for physics, chemistry and CDT all increased, and percentages in maths have barely changed. Rather, the mismatch has arisen probably because of difficulties of deployment, which are greater during a period of falling rolls. Shortage subjects were not particularly affected; indeed, mismatch was unchanged in maths and clown in CDT.
There is no doubt, as I said, that there are too many teachers of some subjects and not enough of others. The situation can be improved considerably by means of in-service training. I have devoted £35·5 million over two years to support in-service training in shortage subjects. That is a substantial sum of money. I have placed in the Library today the key results of the secondary staffing survey. These show that mismatch continues to be a problem. I urge authorities and schools to continue to make use of in-service training support to counter mismatch.
An interesting finding of the staffing survey shows that the implementation of the national curriculum for a reasonable time in September in secondary schools from years one to three will not greatly change the pattern of curriculum provision in those schools. That is, of course, only to be expected, as the national curriculum builds on existing best practice.

Mr. Straw: The Secretary of State spoke about the relatively limited impact of the national curriculum in years one to three. What about years four and five?

Mr. Baker: The hon. Gentleman picked up the cue from his hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, Central (Mr. Fatchett). I heard it myself. The position on years four and five is certainly more complex, because we will then require more young people to take science, modern languages and CDT up to the age of 16. This is a problem we are trying to address.
I find it staggering that Opposition Front Bench Members have no ideas whatsoever. As the ventriloquist was cued by the hon. Member who will wind up, I hope we will have a stunning list of proposals and ideas as to how teacher supply can be increased.
I next deal with the other important source of recruitment to the teaching profession, which is re-entrants —former teachers seeking to come back into the profession. I emphasise the importance of former teachers already returning to teaching in considerable numbers: over half of new teaching appointments are taken by returning teachers. We must try to maintain and, if we can, increase this important source of recruits to teaching. There are some excellent and effective examples of measures aimed at returners: the "keep in touch" schemes, which help teachers out of service to keep abreast of changes in schools; career break schemes, which guarantee a post when a teacher returns; refresher training courses,


for which a grant is available under the training grants scheme; part-time work and job sharing; and the provision of creche and nursery places. The solution lies in the hands of the local education authority and school employers, but much more can be done than at present, and I intend to do much to publicise the best practice so other authorities can follow it.

Mr. Harry Cohen: rose—

Mr. Baker: If the hon. Gentleman will forgive me, I know that many Members want to speak in what is a short debate.
Teaching is an attractive career for many mature entrants, both those looking for a career change and those seeking to re-enter the employment market. Four thousand five hundred mature entrants enter teaching each year for the first time. It is an important source of recruitment to the teaching profession. This is in addition to those who have re-entered teaching after a career break. With their experience and expertise, they have a great deal to offer schools and pupils.
I have offered assistance to this group. I have initiated the development of new courses in the shortage subjects: a shortened, two-year B Ed course and a part-time PGCE course. I have also funded a programme of 11 short taster courses. These give the mature entrants a feel for teaching and individual counselling and advice before they make the decision to become a teacher. I am also trying to encourage more mature people to enter teaching from the ethnic minorities. Across the country, 11 new initial courses aimed at the ethnic minorities have been set up with my support, providing some 200 training places. I am also supporting, at a cost of £30,000, a pilot project in Newham, which is helping men and women from these communities to enter teaching. Please wake up the hon. Member for Newham, South (Mr. Spearing) and tell him that.
I turn to licensed teachers, a policy also aimed at mature entrants. This scheme is designed to replace the range of existing routes by which teachers can be awarded qualified status without completing a standard course of initial training. It will be more rigorous than the existing system because it will ensure, as the existing system does not, that unqualified teachers receive the training they need and demonstrate their competence in the classroom before being granted qualified teacher status. It should also make it easier for mature people to enter teaching. I make no apology for that; I have already explained the importance of mature entrants.
But let me repeat: licensed teachers will be trained. They must be over 26. They must have had two years or more in higher education. That hardly adds up to a soft touch or a second-rate route into teaching.
The hon. Member for Blackburn asked me about the two years in higher education. In the consultation document that I shall be putting out and consulting widely on, we envisage two years to cover graduates and those with HNCs and HNDs. The hon. Gentleman asked me whether someone who had been sacked from two courses would be eligible. We do not intend to include such persons, but there might be cases in which someone has taken two years of a course—not necessarily a B Ed but perhaps a graduate course—and perhaps for family

reasons has left and done something else and then wishes to enter teaching in their 30s. At the moment, they can do that and I would not want to exclude them, but the suggestion of two years is not a loophole to include anyone who has not been trained in higher education.

Mr. Straw: I am glad to have that assurance. I also asked the Secretary of State whether the qualification that those people attain will be a graduate qualification. Will it be a degree, and how will it be validated?

Mr. Baker: They will be given qualified teacher status. They will not be studying for a PGCE, so they will not achieve graduate status, but in virtually all cases they will be graduates in another subject. But I shall move on to that point in my proposal for articled teachers, which are quite separate from licensed teachers.
In all respects the new route is more rigorous than the present arrangements whereby an LEA can recommend anyone for qualified teacher status, without a minimum level of education being stipulated and without any further training being provided. The advantage is that someone who wishes to make a career change will not have to go back to college for a year—which can be very off-putting. They will be trained in post, but the training will be explicit and rigorous.
Licensed teachers will bring with them valuable experience from outside the profession. It is quite wrong to suggest that they will dilute the quality of the profession, as I hear was said at the teacher union conferences. That is an insult to people with important skills to offer whom we need to attract. It is also quite wrong to describe them as teachers on the cheap. In fact, licensed teachers will not come cheap, since to provide training in post while paying a salary and providing cover where needed will require a commitment of resources. We recognise that. The training of licensed teachers is already eligible for grant under the LEA training grants scheme, and I am considering what more is required.
We know that we need to increase the number of good teachers. We know that there are people out there who want to be teachers—good people with valuable experience. We also know that it is hard to insist that someone in mid-career should return to college for a year. The licensed teacher scheme squares that circle. It is one small but important measure towards ensuring that we obtain a sufficient number of high-quality, well trained and well qualified teachers, and I invite the Opposition to support it.
I now turn to the proposal for articled teachers, which has developed from a series of proposals that were put to me when I visited teacher training colleges, universities and polytechnics. I want to do more to attract into teaching graduates who want to train in schools but do not want to spend another year in college taking a PGCE. It is aimed at young graduates of 20, 21 or 22 who have studied three years of physics, French, history or English and do not wish to take a PGCE course in college, although that option will continue to be available.
We have been discussing with teacher trainers, chief education officers and heads a new experimental type of course for what my senior chief inspector has called "articled" teachers. Those students will do two years of school-based training. They will be doing actual teaching for much of the time. The money they get will reflect that. They will also enrol at a teacher training college which will


award them a PGCE when they complete their training. I shall be inviting bids from LEAs and teacher training colleges jointly for pilot schemes to start in September 1990.
The students will get a balance of practical experience and training in teaching methods. Most of their training will be done by teachers in the school. I shall be monitoring the scheme closely. LEAs and teacher trainers have welcomed the scheme. They agree with me that new forms of teacher training are needed and that we must be flexible in considering them.

Dame Elaine Kellett-Bowman: I am sure that my right hon. Friend has read the quite outstanding report by HMI on St. Martin's teacher training college. That college always gets an outstanding report. If it were to apply for the scheme, I trust that it would stand a good chance of getting it.

Mr. Baker: I know where it is, and it is a very good teacher training college. We would envisage that the young graduates in other subjects would be taken on in schools and paid a salary. They would also enrol at a college so that they could do some of the theoretical and background work of a teacher training course. That would last for two years, and would attract many people into the profession.
I now turn to the question of the quality and rigour of initial teacher training. All courses of initial teacher training have to be approved by the holder of my office. Courses are approved against specified criteria. The Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education—CATE—advises me on whether courses satisfy the criteria.
I have reviewed the criteria and the machinery for applying them. I propose to reconstitute the council with effect from 1 January 1990 with a wider remit and new, tougher criteria. I shall ask it not only to scrutinise new courses but to monitor those it has already seen.
The new criteria will take account of recent developments, including in particular the national curriculum. For example, all new primary teachers will have to have studied English, maths, science and design and technology. The criteria will also, as far as possible, be expressed in terms of competencies. In approving a course, I want to be clear about what the student can do when he or she completes the course. For example, all new teachers will have to be able to teach and assess the subjects they have specialised in, to the level appropriate to the top of the age range for which they have trained.
I shall be issuing a consultation document tomorrow. It will set out my proposals in detail and contain the text of the new criteria. I am asking for comments by 30 June. Initial teacher training is now becoming more rigorous and practical. But we can and shall do more.
I have set out the action which the Government have taken. We accept that there is a serious problem that must be addressed.

Mr. Cohen: Will the Secretary of State give way?

Mr. Baker: No, if the hon. Gentleman will forgive me.
I have set out the actions we are taking to attract more people into the profession, our action on bursaries, licensed teachers and articled teachers, the criteria for teacher training courses and the increase in the number of teacher training courses in 1990. It is a positive programme for action to deal with the problem. We have been faced with a complete absence of ideas and total negation from

the Opposition. The hon. Member for Blackburn has not produced any new ideas since he was appointed as my shadow. He is a perfect shadow; he is totally shadowy. We have heard no new ideas. The ideas that were supposed to be new were a recycling of my ideas. I understand that he is to make a great speech this week on something—on what, I do not know.
The Opposition should apply themselves more rigorously to deciding what should be done about teacher shortages instead of analysing the problem. They have been in opposition long enough to come up with some ideas. The fact that they have not produced any ideas means that they will be in opposition for even longer.

Mr. Peter Shore: The Secretary of State has rehearsed the various measures that he has taken or proposes to take to help ease the shortage of teachers. But he has not attempted to tell the House his estimate of the net contribution that those measures will make to the overall shortage of teachers. He has not explained why, after his three years at the Department of Education and Science and after 10 years of the rule of his party, Britain is experiencing a far more serious problem of teacher supply in 1989 than existed in 1979.
When my hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mr. Straw) described the position as a crisis in teacher supply, the Secretary of State was playing with words when he said that he would not quite go along with that, but teacher shortages in certain areas and certain subjects are a matter of major concern. Let us settle for there being a crisis in the shortage of teachers in certain subjects and certain areas. That is different from what the Minister of State was reported to have said when she wanted to nail the myth of teacher shortage. I shall speak not just of a crisis in teacher supply. In my own area of London, and especially in the borough of Tower Hamlets, it is more a calamity and catastrophe.
In Tower Hamlets, the basic and most necessary of all the obligations on local education authorities—the obligation to supply schooling for children of school age —is not being met. It is a question not of children being sent home from school, but of children not being able to get into school. Throughout the past year. 400 to 500 children have been counted who were of school age, but were unable to find a place in school. Many were Bengali children and for them the deprivation of education was even more serious because of the linguistic and other cultural problems than it was for the ordinary residents of the area. After heroic efforts over the past six months, the number still stands at about 286. That is the number known. I fear, as do most people in the area, that there is a considerable additional number of uncounted children who have been unable to obtain a school place.
I am not describing a case in which the education authority—in this case, the Inner London education authority—has failed to provide schools. In the past 12 to 18 months, about five new schools have been built. The difficulty is that we have the schools, but not the teachers to man them. The last three schools completed in the borough have a capacity of more than 300 children, but have been able to accommodate only half that number as a result of the teacher shortage.
The problem is at its most vivid and most intolerable when one can cite children who cannot find places in


school, who are out of school and should be in school. But that does not measure the dimensions of what is a major crisis in teacher supply in London and the south-east and what is a catastrophe in the case of inner London. I shall describe the vacancy position for full-time posts in the borough of Tower Hamlets. In nursery schools, 95 posts have been approved and there are 17 vacancies. In primary schools, there are 868 posts and 118 vacancies. In secondary schools, there are 742 posts and 122 vacancies. Those vacancies are met substantially, although not completely, by supply teachers. Without supply teachers, there would be a complete breakdown of education in the borough of Tower Hamlets.
In addition, the borough has a shocking turnover of permanent staff. In the last year for which there are figures, 1987–88, 33 per cent. of permanent staff in nursery and primary schools left. In secondary schools, the figure was 27 per cent. There is hardly a teacher to be found who has more than three years' experience in the borough.

Ms. Mildred Gordon: Does my right hon. Friend agree that the case that permanent vacancies are filled by supply teachers is worse than it seems in view of the fact that in one school in Tower Hamlets there were 10 different supply teachers in the first 15 weeks of the year? That is not teaching; it is just child-minding.

Mr. Shore: My hon. Friend is correct. I was going to say some additional words about the role of temporary teachers. Many temporary teachers are drawn from Australia and New Zealand. As the Secretary of State knows, they come over for a year or two. Schools are lucky if they stay for a full year, but at least they may stay for six months. I shall read the House a letter I received earlier this year from the education officer for division 5 of ILEA, which is Tower Hamlets. He said:
the Division has only managed in the past 3/4 years to keep schools open by the use of casual cover teachers mainly from New Zealand and Australia. These teachers have for some time been experiencing considerable delays in getting their qualifications recognised by the D.E.S. This has meant that they have had to be employed, and paid initially at unqualified teacher rates, pending receipt of recognition. This often takes many months".
That has been a major problem, which I have pursued with the Secretary of State.
I cannot see any sign that matters will improve, even if all the schemes mentioned by the Secretary of State produce additional teachers. Unless different action is taken, I very much doubt that those teachers will find their way into the inner cities, where the teacher shortage is at its worst. I have two reasons for that belief. First, in division 5 we know from our own demographic records that we need 1,800 new places and the teachers required to look after those children by 1990. A further 1,000 places will be needed by 1992 and an estimated additional 500 by 1994.
The second reason for my pessimism is that it is at least possible at present, under ILEA, to target teachers and efforts to recruit them on the boroughs where there are the most grievous shortages. Tower Hamlets and Hackney, the adjacent borough, are receiving most of ILEA's attention. But by next April, there will be no ILEA and we shall all be fighting for teachers with our own resources.

There will be appalling competition—an auction—for scarce teachers throughout London and the most deprived boroughs will come out worst.
ILEA is doing a great deal. The Secretary of State mentioned returning teachers, who are crucial. ILEA has been spending a considerable amount on a campaign to attract teachers back into the profession and it has also agreed to introduce an allowance for so-called non-qualified teachers—that is, qualified teachers from Australia and New Zealand whose qualifications are not recognised by the Department of Education and Science—to encourage them to stay in the authority. In addition, ILEA is trying to give increments for experience and is paying many to assist teachers with travel. But what ILEA has done is unlikely to solve the problem. The problem is too serious, especially in London where teachers have to face the appalling problems of finding accommodation.
When I considered the rather self-congratulatory speech of the Secretary of State, I could not help but think about some of the actions he has taken that have been anything but helpful. Why did he have to rate-cap ILEA when he knows that the payment of teachers and money for facilities could help to ease the teacher shortage? Why has he ignored all the evidence that teachers' pay is a major factor in creating a shortage of teachers? It is not only the Department of Education and Science which could help to ease those problems. The Home Office and the Department of Employment, when considering applications for work permits, do not recognise primary teachers as one of the priority categories. Teachers with primary teaching skills from Canada or elsewhere are not registered as a priority category and, therefore, are not given a permit to work in the United Kingdom.
It is a peculiarly had situation. It is difficult to understand why, when the Select Committee on Home Affairs reported specifically on the borough of Tower Hamlets in its "Bangladeshis in Britain" report at the end of 1986 and pointed out that they were under-achieving educationally and not getting the quality, quantity or kind of education that they needed, the Minister has done nothing to help to alleviate what is basically a disgrace and a shame to the whole of our education system. That is extraordinary.
In conclusion, I remind the Secretary of State that he is a Minister in a Government whose Prime Minister started her third term with a pledge to take on, to help and to ameliorate the problems of the inner cities.

Mr. James Pawsey: I listened with interest to the elegant and eloquent speech of the right hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Stepney (Mr. Shore). I can understand even more than previously why he is held in such respect and affection in his constituency. He spoke with clear knowledge about London and I am sure that he will forgive me if I do not follow him down the road that he has signposted.
Like many of my hon. Friends, I welcome and enjoy Opposition Supply days. I am not certain who, on the Opposition side, is responsible for the selection of subjects, but whoever suggested this one on teacher shortages must be working for us. I am tempted to say that to initiate a debate on this subject is the equivalent, if not of shooting oneself in the foot, then of shooting up the blackboard. But then that is the increasing tendency of the hon.


Member for Blackburn (Mr. Straw). Witness his exhibition last week when he sought, on a completely bogus point of order, to attack my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the production of the consultation document on higher education.
However, even the hon. Gentleman is not all bad. I welcomed his comments in The Sunday Times about the suggestion for a "Queen's award for education for good schools". I welcome his conversion to that point because some years ago I suggested it to my right hon. Friend the then Secretary of State, now Lord Joseph, but he did not feel inclined to take it on board. I have also suggested it to my right hon. Friend the present Secretary of State, except I ventured to suggest that it might be termed, "The Secretary of State's award for schools". I hope that now that there is some unity between the hon. Member for Blackburn and me on this, he might advance the case—

Mr. Nicholas Bennett: What about "The Baker prize for excellence"?

Mr. Pawsey: Yes, as my hon. Friend has said, "The Baker prize for excellence," would be a good title for it.
Today's Opposition topic is teacher shortages and, like so many others, it is wide of the mark. The facts are that last year 1·5 per cent. of all primary and 1 per cent. of all secondary posts were unfilled—that is actually fewer than in 1987. The shortages, not surprisingly, were most felt in the south-east—Particularly London which was the point made by the right hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Stepney. But it is fair to say that there is no overall significant shortage of teachers. Indeed, I was pleased to read that the Universities' Council for the Education of Teachers, reporting on the first destination survey of students completing university courses of initial training for the teaching profession in 1988, said:
It is pleasing to note that in 1988, after a slight dip in 1987, the figure for qualified students known to have obtained a teaching post in the UK returned to its normal level (75·1 per cent.); this was despite the increase in output.
That last phrase should surely be the key to teacher shortages. There is an increase in the number of people joining the profession. That suggests that this debate, like so many others initiated by the Opposition, is out of date.
That is par for the Opposition course and once more they have chosen to debate a subject that is showing signs of improving. It seems that Opposition Members are deliberately deciding to select subjects that show Government policies in an improving light.
Despite what the Opposition say, young people are increasingly seeing teaching as an attractive and worthwhile profession. There is little truth, if any, in the allegation that teaching is an underrated profession with morale at rock bottom. Indeed, the evidence suggests the opposite.
Like my hon. Friends, I am certainly not complacent and, although there may be sufficient teachers overall, there are shortages in certain subjects and recruitment difficulties in some regions. These points have been recognised by the Government for some years, and clearly the Government's action is now bearing fruit.
I welcome the more flexible use of starting salaries and incentive allowances. I welcome the more active local recruitment of teachers. I welcome more part-time working and, above all, I welcome the active encouragement to former teachers to return to the profession. That point was hammered home by my right hon. Friend.
In fact, 1988 was an excellent recruitment year for teachers, but, that having been said, the training for teachers must be right. Social theory is OK but it may be thought to be a poor substitute for actual classroom practice. Education best takes place in a disciplined environment and in some cases, and in some schools, that necessary discipline is lacking. I hope that when my hon. Friend the Minister of State replies, she will give some thought to how the subject of teaching is taught in our colleges. I hope that she might persuade those who produce the syllabus in those colleges to build in more classroom practice.
I am absolutely convinced that the overwhelming majority of teachers are committed to their work and to the young people in their charge, and I should like to see their remuneration reflect both the importance of their work and the commitment which the majority of them bring to it.

Mr. Flannery: The hon. Gentleman has never said that before to his right hon. Friend.

Mr. Pawsey: With respect, that is what I am saying to my right hon. Friend who is listening to this debate in the same intent way as Opposition Members.
I should like to see good teachers getting more money and greater differentials in the profession, with those who are the best getting the best pay.
My right hon. Friend has already sought to persuade the Treasury to make available additional funds for teachers. I wish him well when the new round starts and hope that he is successful in obtaining better funding. I found it significant that the Chancellor is a signatory to the Government's amendment to the motion and I am certain that, when my right hon. and hon. Friends in the Treasury read the report of the debate, they will study with care the references to increased pay for teachers. I hope that when they do so they will recognise the importance of having a reasonably remunerated profession and that they will ensure that the necessary funds are made available.
Earlier I referred to the fact that in some areas and in some subjects there are difficulties and I very much hope that my right hon. Friend will not let a vocal, if shortsighted, opposition to licensed teachers prevent him from going forward with this idea. Good teachers are those who have the knowledge and qualifications, and the ability and willingness to communicate that knowledge to children and young people in the classroom.
I support the concept of licensed teachers and look forward to reading, in due course, the detailed proposals, but I believe that the trailed plans might be inadequate in one respect. It seems that present ideas make provision for local education authorities to supervise schemes for licensed teachers. I believe that that may not work as well as it should, because some local education authorities remain heavily union oriented and we are all well aware of the views of certain unions regarding the concept of licensed teachers. It would, therefore, seem to me preferable if responsibility for supervision of licensed teachers were to lie with the individual school. Let it be their decision. Schools and heads will enjoy a greater discretion under the Education Reform Act 1988 and that discretion should operate in this area as well as others.
I was pleased to hear my right hon. Friend say that licensed teachers should be supervised by experienced teachers for a period of, say, two years.

Mr. Roy Beggs: Having had a lot of experience in schools for many years, I should like the hon. Member to tell the House how schools that are understaffed will find the manpower to supervise and train the licensed teacher.

Mr. Pawsey: I have already said that it will be on-the-job training. I believe that experienced teachers have a great deal of knowledge to impart to those who are eager to learn, and those who are coming forward to take advantage of the licensed teacher scheme will be anxious to learn and, in turn, to impart their knowledge to the young people in their charge.

Mr. Flannery: Answer the question.

Mr. Pawsey: I have answered the question and if the hon. Gentleman was not listening, as usual, that is his hard luck.
I believe that at the end of two years and only after the satisfactory completion of that period the licensed teacher would be fully qualified. If that idea is regarded, as it clearly is by certain Opposition Members, as being revolutionary, let me say that the right already exists in grant-maintained schools and, if we trust those schools to supervise licensed teachers, why should not other schools have a similar right?
Licensed teachers would enable genuinely committed men and women to enter the profession, would constitute an additional source of experience and expertise and should be welcomed by all who are genuinely concerned about teacher numbers. Licensed teachers would not dilute the quality of the profession. That point has been well hammered home by my right hon. Friend. The word he used in this context was "rigorous", and he was right. Clearly, this route to the profession will be a difficult one, but I am certain that many will wish to take advantage of it. It is unfair and unjust to suggest that licensed teachers will dilute the profession. Licensed teachers, in my view, will help to ensure an adequate supply of intelligent and gifted people who want to teach and to work with the country's youngsters. They should be encouraged to come forward, for they will do much to improve the quality and standard of state education.

Mr. Simon Hughes: The honest seeker after truth might have been slightly surprised by the different interpretations put upon the same facts in this debate. The debate opened with the hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr. Straw) arguing factually matters that were not contradicted by the Secretary of State. The Secretary of State was then asked implicitly to accept or deny the comment made by his colleague the Minister of State that the teacher shortage was a myth. There was no denial of that, yet the Secretary of State admitted that there clearly was a problem. He announced that the Government had taken measures, were taking measures and would take measures—all of which is welcome—but did not suggest—and he was specifically asked that question from these Benches—that even all those measures together would ensure that we had the number of teachers we needed.
The right hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Stepney (Mr. Shore) then confirmed the facts and showed that in inner London particularly—it is worse here than elsewhere—there is not just a problem but a fundamental, deep-rooted and long-lasting crisis. He used stronger

words than those, "catastrophe" and others. I have a constituency which, except for the river in between, is next door to his, and we in Southwark share many of the same desperate week-by-week problems and concerns about shortage of teachers that he has argued apply to Tower Hamlets. Southwark, Tower Hamlets and other inner London boroughs have all had terrible recruitment problems over many years.
Then we had the hon. Member for Rugby and Kenilworth (Mr. Pawsey) saying that some of the proposals are good but, reading between his lines, arguing, and possibly for the first time, that nothing will solve the fundamental problem unless there is more money for teachers and more fundamental ways of improving their morale.
The reality is confirmed in the recently published annual report of Her Majesty's senior chief inspector of schools, entitled "Standards in Education", which makes the case extremely clearly. At the end of that report, from paragraph 67 onwards, the senior inspector points the way forward in the light of the Education Reform Act 1988 and says:
In addition there are a number of sphinxes along the route whose riddles will need to be solved if the education service is to respond effectively to the many changes it is called upon to make.
The first of those centres on that most important component of an effective education service namely, ensuring a sufficient supply of suitably qualified and competent teachers trained and willing to set about doing all that needs to be done.
He concludes that section with these words:
Standards of learning are never improved by poor teachers and there are no cheap, high quality routes into teaching.
He then goes on to make it clear that the need for teachers will grow because of the demands that the new educational format places on the education system The national curriculum, the new responsibilities for schools that follow from the GCSE and, as increasing numbers of hon. Members know, the practical implications for teachers' time of more and more assessment and more and more non-contact work, mean that we shall need more and more teachers. Nothing that the Secretary of State has said today suggests that we will catch up and supply our education service with those numbers of teachers as a result of the sorts of small, limited-effect remedies that he has proposed.
Lastly, the senior chief inspector makes the point that, in addition to the general problem and the growing problem because of new demands, there are, of course, the specific problems which we all know have now been identified in specific subjects to complement the specific geographical areas of difficulty. Then we have his recommendation:
In seeking to ensure that is what happens"—
that is, that we manage to meet the demands of the educational future—
teachers' pay, conditions of service and the nature of the changes intended will all have a part to play. But of great importance to most teachers is that the work they do is seen to be valued and rated highly by society; that its difficulties are understood and that teachers and education are not used as convenient scapegoats for all society's problems. Currently"—
and this is his finding; not a party political finding—
too many teachers feel that their profession and its work are misjudged and seriously undervalued.
That is this year's report on the teaching profession and that is why, when it comes to voting on the motion at the


end of the debate, it would be wrong to vote for the amendment in the name of the Prime Minister, the Secretary of State, the Chancellor and others,which
welcomes the clear indication of the success
of the measures so far taken. Although of course there have been some successes, after 10 years in office the Government are complacent if they say that what they have done has been successful. What they have done so far has not succeeded. We do not have the teachers in place. We do not have teachers with morale in place. We do not have teachers as a profession paid adequately to ensure adequate supply in the weeks, months and years to come.
In inner London one feels that as strongly as anywhere. We are short of over 650 teachers in London alone. It is two and a half times worse in the capital city than the average across the country.
It makes me reflect that, perhaps, there is above all one simple question that the Secretary of State and his colleagues must answer: what is a teacher worth? If we imagine that teachers are in a free market, good performance and high productivity would lead to improving salaries. As the Secretary of State has acknowledged that teachers during the past year have put on a good performance and increased their productivity —given all the other demands on them�žsurely market forces should prevail, at least to some extent, and teachers should be awarded a substantial pay increase. However, they have received an increase of 6 per cent., which is below the current inflation rate. That is derisory. It does not recognise the teachers' hard work during the past year, let alone the other demands we make of them. It is about time�žand the Secretary of State ducked this issue from the beginning to the end of his speech—that teachers were offered salaries comparable with those that could be earned by graduates in careers such as accountancy, management or industry. One will not get people to stay in teaching if they are not paid the same as they would receive if they sold their skills elsewhere.
I find it ridiculous that one police force in England and Wales—the Metropolitan police—spends more on recruitment in a year than the Department of Education and Science does on recruiting teachers as a career. Last year, the Metropolitan police spent £1·1 million. The Department of Education and Science's teaching as a career unit spent £0·9 million. We should learn from the Metropolitan police. Perhaps we should have a "wanted" notice, such as the police have, to make people aware of the drama and the danger of the present position in words such as
Missing teachers. Do you know one? Have you seen one? Can you help?
It is about lime that the Department of Education and Science made people aware of the nature, the urgency and depth of the problem which it is not investing sufficient money to redress, even from its departmental budget.

Mr. Nicholas Bennett: The hon. Gentleman muddles up like with unlike. If he wants to compare the recruitment of the police and the recruitment of teachers, the comparison should be between what the Home Office spends on recruiting police and issuing general advertisements and what the Department of Education and Science spends. The Metropolitan police, as a direct employer, is like a local education authority. The hon. Gentleman should look at the local education authorities' budgets for recruitment. That is the analogy.

Mr. Hughes: I shall deal exactly with that point. When there have been shortages in recruits to the police or armed forces in the decade that the Government have been in office, the Secretary of State for the Home Department and the Secretary of State for Defence have said that we must pay more because we need people to work in the front line. We have heard no such response from the Treasury to help the Department of Education and Science to a similar job. Of course, the front-line responsibility for recruiting comes from the education authorities, which are the direct employers. However, we all know from where they get their money. They obtain their money from the Department of Education and Science; most of their money comes from grant. The Government need to give a lead, which in 10 years we have not seen.
It is a disgrace that we are asking people who go into teaching to stay at a regularly lower level of income and with lower levels of career prospects than they would elsewhere in the professional world. I intervened to ask the Secretary of State about the bursary schemes. There have been some improvements in the sense that bursaries may have reversed the decline of those going into shortage subjects. However, many of the targets have not been achieved. The Secretary of State has admitted that in the House.
The licensed teacher scheme still has the sort of problems mentioned in the intervention by the hon. Member for Antrim, East (Mr. Beggs) during the speech of the hon. Member for Rugby and Kenilworth (Mr. Pawsey). In order for licensed teachers to be trained by full-time, long-term teachers, the teachers already in post need the time to do the training, in addition to their other responsibilities. That means there would need to be more teachers to cover the same amount of teaching time. That means more money will be needed, because one must supply the resources. Of course, it is a good idea for those already in the profession to train others in the classroom, but they cannot do that without more money being given to those education authorities, because training is an additional function and teachers are already hard pressed and overworked.
What about the pool of inactive teachers? We need to look more closely at recruiting from that supply. There are more than 400,000 people currently in that pool. I am sure that many of them would come back if they thought that their careers would be well rewarded and worth returning to.
It is, of course, welcome to have new ideas put forward. We heard, but only in shadowy terms, the idea of articled teachers, although it appears to have a potential. I shall not reject it as a possible idea, but other approaches are needed too. Many ideas currently being put to the Select Committee by the employers, the Association of County Councils, are practical ways of recruiting people, of holding people and of assisting those who have family commitments and otherwise might not be able to return to teaching.
The regional difficulties will not be solved by differential pay, which appears to be rejected by all the best evidence. If we are to tackle teacher shortage, the Government's housing policy needs to change to ensure that teachers in areas of high housing cost can find somewhere to live, that they have the ability to travel to work and that they can move to where the jobs are.
One of the difficulties is that the consequence of shortages is that not only does morale go down and


reliance on supply teachers go up, but we ask teachers regularly to cover for colleagues as well. That means that more and more teachers are teaching subjects with which they are not familiar. The difficulties not only concern recruiting teachers from Australia and New Zealand, but regularly there has been pressure for Irish teachers, for example, to be accepted as qualified and allowed to teach here. It has taken a long time to persuade the Department of Education and Science to allow many of them to come to help.
In the months to come, with the national curriculum, teachers will have substantial new pressures on them. I say to the Secretary of State and his Ministers that we need to restore free bargaining between employer and employee, with the almost certain result that teachers will be paid more. More money must not just go to the teachers who go to the Government's favoured institutions such as the CTCs. Why should people be paid more to teach in a CTC than in any other school in a hard-pressed city front-line environment? The reality is that they are being paid more because it is one of the only ways in which the Secretary of State can be sure that he will get teachers into those colleges. That is another form of distortion in favour of his latest scheme.
We need to improve the range of senior grades. An enormous number of teachers are held at a top grade without any prospect of improving their lot thereafter. We need to develop secondment schemes and increasingly to put more money into in-service training. We need to widen the bonus schemes too.
I have put five specific ideas to the Secretary of State, but I end with this. Unless we increase substantially the funding for schools and for teachers from the Department of Education and Science budget, we shall not deal with the continuing problem of teacher shortages. The latest public expenditure figures show that the increase in the schools budget will be less than 4 per cent. between this financial year and the next. Unless the Secretary of State or his Minister of State give an assurance tonight that planned spending on teachers will at least keep pace with inflation, we shall end the next decade with the same problems as we have ended this. Now is the time for investment for the future. The Government have the ability to spend money. They must now do so.

Mr. George Walden: The hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr. Straw) predictably accused my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State of complacency. That appears to be a rather surprising suggestion, because, if my right hon. Friend had been complacent about teachers, they would have had a much easier time than they have had in the past few years.
I believe that my right hon. Friend knows well that we face a potentially serious problem. What he has not been able to underline—I imagine for reasons of state—is that it is a problem not only of quantity but of quality. My right hon. Friend will face a very serious problem as we get up to the demographic dip in 1995. On the one hand, he will be competing more and more intensively with other employers outside who will be in a position—because they will be private enterprise firms—to improve the package of

attractions that they offer to young graduates and, on the other, he will need to do two things at once in his general strategy on education.
My right hon. Friend is trying to raise the standards in schools at the same time as he is trying to expand the number of people in higher education—incidentally, I congratulate him on his consultation paper on that subject. If my right hon. Friend does not succeed in recruiting not only the right number but the right quality of teachers, we shall see an expansion in higher education, but also a dilution of higher education. That would be a catastrophe. There are some universities where quality is not all that it should be now. Because of the failure to recruit sufficient teachers of sufficient quality, there is the stark possibility of a failure to deliver the national curriculum in schools and a simultaneous watering down of British higher education. That is a fearful prospect.
I am glad that my right hon. Friend announced tonight —I shall look at the details tomorrow—that he will tighten up the conditions and criteria in teacher-training colleges, because, as I have already said, my right hon. Friend has two problems: he must get more teachers and better ones. I hope that he will do whatever he can to demystify some of the pseudo-professionalism that arises in those institutions. I hope that he will continue to support and encourage best practice because he will do a great service to the profession as well as to parents.
Recently I read a study by an academic—my right hon. Friend probably paid for it—which came, as such educational studies often do, to conclusions of a stunning banality. The problem posed was why it was difficult to recruit teachers and there were three parts to the answer: first pay, secondly status, and thirdly the children—that is especially important.
My hon. Friend the Member for Rugby and Kenilworth (Mr. Pawsey) is wrong to say that teachers must be reasonably paid. Given our current situation, teachers should be well paid, provided that the pressures on them to improve the quality of their profession in the ways hinted at by my right hon. Friend are maintained and provided that the profession accepts the desirability and inevitability of differential pay according to merit as far as possible.
My right hon. Friend must make it clear to the Chancellor of the Exchequer—I am sure that he will—that we must not think in terms of paying teachers what we can get away with, but paying them well, because a potential crisis is looming in the mid-1990s. If he is short of arguments for convincing the Chancellor, he could point out that if the Chancellor cannot afford to pay for education, he cannot afford an economy. It is education that will produce the highly trained technicians that will be needed and they will decide whether his economy sinks or swims. If we cannot afford to pay for education, we cannot afford a civilised country. I do not need to give any illustrations to the House of the yobbishness and the loutishness with which our society is infested and which has a lot to do with basic problems of education. I hope that my right hon. Friend will succeed in not only getting whatever crumbs he can from the Chancellor of the Exchequer, but in making clear to him that we need a forward-looking strategy that will deal with the growing crisis rather than waiting until it is upon us.
The second problem regarding the recruitment of teachers, as suggested by our expensive academic study, was that of teacher status. When the average person is


watching the television and wondering what to do with his life and he happens to see NUT representatives' behaviour at their conference, he may not be automatically attracted into the profession by that rather dissolute image. Teachers could do a lot to help themselves regarding status. Teachers must also look at their own teaching methods. I do not believe that parents or children will respect teachers if
the schoolmaster timidly flatters his pupils and the pupils make light of their masters as well as their attendants. Generally speaking the young copy their elders, argue with them and will not do as they are told; while the old, anxious not to be thought disagreeable tyrants, imitate the young and condescend to enter into their jokes and amusements.
That is not the view of some reactionary frump—it is not even my view; it comes from Plato. The problem has been with us for some time, but the image that teachers project to parents and to children will not improve the status of the profession if it is still based on the old-fashioned ideas of the 1960s. However, as I have just illustrated, the problem has been with us for many years.
The third part of the answer given in the academic study related to children. We must be imaginative when considering this aspect of the problem. We are living in a country with the highest divorce rate in Europe. I listened with interest and with respect to the points made by the right hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Stepney (Mr. Shore). I do not represent a constituency with social and economic problems that are remotely like those faced by the right hon. Gentleman's constituency, but problems exist.
When I visit schools in my area I ask how the reading is coming along. That is a pointed question because in some of my schools there is a tendency to talk about damp patches on the wall. I am more interested in the quality of education. When I ask that question, some teachers say to me with a laugh, "Reading, Mr. Walden? Some of our children cannot even talk properly." They tell me that their first problem as teachers is not what to teach that day, but whether to comfort the mother who is crying around the corner because the marriage has just broken up or the partner has gone away for the nth time, or the child who has come into the classroom crying because his father or mother has disappeared for the nth time.
The social problems faced in this country that occur to a greater degree here than elsewhere in Europe—remember our divorce rate—are immediately impacting on the teacher and making teaching a less attractive profession. I am not known for being particularly soft-hearted to teachers, but when such problems arise in my socially privileged constituency, it does not take much imagination to consider what is happening in others, mainly Labour-held, although I accept that a few of my hon. Friends also face similar problems.
My final point—I raise it with perhaps tedious predictability from the point of view of my right hon. Friend—is that teachers also face children who come to school in the morning, often, although not exclusively, from broken homes having stayed up late at night. They have spent the night not doing directly educational things, but a thing that tends to de-educate and cretinise children —watching four or five hours of television. What are the Government going to do about that? They have a curious strategy. On the one hand, my right hon. Friend is trying to fill the heads of children with something worthwhile, but on the other my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary seems to want to fill them with cretinising rubbish from

Mr. Murdoch. One could present this as a rational division of labour—a sort of Champs de Mars by which one digs a hole and another fills it up. But it seems not a particularly intelligent approach to what is a fundamental problem.
I was struck the other day to note that the Secretary of State, with impressive educational idealism, was teaching "A Tale of Two Cities." I do not think I am being too hard on the children of today when I suggest that few children in this country have read or will ever read "A Tale of Two Cities" because it is full of long words and they are not taught to read difficult books. So if what the Home Secretary plans in his broadcasting White Paper goes ahead, not only will children not read Dickens; they will be lucky if they can get their minds round Adrian Mole.
All of this has a direct impact on the problem that we are discussing because, with about a third of British marriages breaking up, teachers face all the problems that arise from such a large incidence of broken families. They also face the dismal prospect of being confronted by the telly-tired child in the morning. If the Home Secretary has his way, that child will be cretinised even more.
These are serious matters. They may sound tangential, but they are central to the whole problem of boosting the profession, qualitatively and quantitatively, because we do not want to get into the situation in which we found ourselves in the 1960s—which everyone, including Opposition Members, must recall—when we had to take whoever we could get to teach. Many people would not touch the profession with a barge pole today.
The Secretary of State knows my views on pay; we must pay as much as possible to good teachers simply to obtain them. I earnestly appeal to him to take an even closer hand than I am sure he has been taking already in the question of the broadcasting White Paper. I repeat that British children spend as much time watching TV as they spend in the classroom.
To solve the problem of teacher shortage, two things are necessary. One is the need for imagination, and my right hon. Friend has a lot of that. The other is cash. I hope the Chancellor of the Exchequer will see the force in the arguments that are being adduced, not only by me—mine may sound rather predictable—but by my hon. Friends and by some Opposition Members. Their remarks cannot all be dismissed as party political boosterism. Consider, for example, the speech, to which I referred, of the right hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Stepney.

Mr. Martin Flannery: The hon. Member for Buckingham (Mr. Walden) made a thoughtful contribution, and my hon. Friends and I could agree with a good deal of it. He quoted Plato. I remind him that Plato never had to contend with the present Prime Minister and her Secretary of State for Education and Science. The hon. Gentleman will accept that Plato lived in a vastly different world. However, the hon. Gentleman came to the fundamental point in the end, which is that we are discussing teacher shortages and not, for example, what is happening in broadcasting. We live in a get-rich-quick society in which children are taught things that we thought they should never learn.
It must be remembered that this debate was initiated by the Opposition. Had that not been the case, the debate would not be taking place. A characteristic of the speeches of Conservative Members has been their attempt to


defend, as though it had never occurred, a crime over which they have presided. The nation's education system has been forced to the point where the Government are having to take steps which we thought, indeed hoped, would never be needed again. I refer to the problem which faced Britain after the second world war.
At that time we had to consider allowing people who had never taught to stand before our children and teach them. We refused to allow that to happen. Instead, we created an emergency scheme by which we put people through college and taught them how to teach.
Although the hon. Member for Buckingham was reasonable in the statements that he made, he knows only too well that it is unfair to attack the teachers when the real problem is the shortage of teachers. That shortage has been brought about by the actions of the Government. Conservative Members cannot escape the responsibility they share in those actions.
I will not go into the question of licensed teachers. The vast majority of the teaching profession is totally against that concept. We got rid of licensed teachers years ago. The idea of licensed teachers is not a revolutionary one. Indeed, it is counter-revolutionary. We never want them again, and the fact that the Government will foist them on us shows how desperate they are to push people in front of our children—not their children—when such people have never taught before. That will not be tolerated, especially when there are available people who are properly qualified to teach.
Teacher training colleges have been closed all over the country. The Government know that they have created the problem that we face, and they are not prepared to admit it or even talk about it. In 1979, the discussion was about how to educate our children. There was no crisis over a shortage of teachers. As I say, not since the end of the war has such a crisis existed.
Conservative Members refuse to admit what has been done in their name. They have no humility about it. Indeed, they adopt an appalling arrogance, talking and laughing about a problem that is causing great difficulty. Some Conservative Back Benchers are happy to talk and giggle. Indeed, one of them, the hon. Member for Rugby and Kenilworth (Mr. Pawsey), accused me earlier of not listening, yet he is not even in his place to listen to my remarks.
To my knowledge, when the hon. Gentleman has been in the Chamber he has never said a naughty word against the leadership of his party, even though he knows how wrong they have been on this issue. After all, was he not a teacher? He is in line to be chief groveller to the Prime Minister and to the Secretary of State, who is running the state system of education. The right hon. Gentleman also sits there smiling in his usual way, despite all that he has done.
The members of the Select Committee on Education, Science and Arts became profoundly conscious of the fact that we were facing a crisis in education and particularly in the shortage of teachers. As I look at the Conservative Benches, I wonder whether any of the Members sitting there have been, please put up their hands? It is clear that they are not here, but I am here to explain why we on the the Select Committee are studying this issue.
We are well aware of the crisis in education, and I must report that only one person who appeared before the Select Committee—I refer not to the Secretary of State but to his chief functionary in the Department, Mr. Clive Savine—asked us what crisis we were talking about. He had not noticed any crisis, he told us. Nor had he noticed that morale in the teaching profession was low.
The Minister of State has claimed that there is no crisis and that it is all a myth. Even the hon. Member for Rugby and Kenilworth—with a great private school such as Rugby in his constituency—has not noticed that a crisis exists. Indeed, if an elephant walked through the Chamber and the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State told him not to see it, he would say there was no elephant. [Interruption.] Conservative Members grin like Cheshire cats, despite the crimes that they have committed against our children.
I have with me the embarrassing last report of the HMI —embarrassing for the Government—which spoke of
that most important component of an effective education service, namely ensuring a sufficient supply of suitably qualified teachers … Without that, the rest falls.
If the hon. Member for Rugby and Kenilworth, who accused me of not listening, will listen to me, I advise him to read that paragraph. Nearly all the teachers say that there is a crisis in education.
The general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, usually a great friend of the Government, used the word "catastrophe", as my right hon. Friend the Member for Bethnal Green and Stepney (Mr. Shore) did in his great speech. He was attacked for using an emotive word. We have made it plain that there is an approaching catastrophe. At the same time the Government say that it does not exist. Teacher training establishments, both colleges and universities, say that there is a problem. They also say that morale in the staff room is putting young people off teaching. The Secretary of State should not boast about how many say that they are going into teaching. A massive number of young people who have said that do not take it up. The right hon. Gentleman has said that they all come back, but that is not true. The Government are underplaying a serious problem.
Why is there a shortage and a developing crisis? It is because of the failure of the Government to realise the extent of the problem. I sat through the three months of the Committee stage of the Education Reform Act 1988. Ministers never agreed that there was a teacher shortage, created by the Government. They attack teachers and talk about the lowering of teacher morale. Anyone who is honourable in the Chamber knows that, previously, if any hon. Member mentioned teachers or the teachers' unions, there was a howl of abuse from the Conservative Benches, led by the Secretary of State, his predecessor and the Prime Minister. Now there is a slight change. The Secretary of State began his speech by praising teachers; that is new. Some Tory Members asked for more cash for teachers; that is new. The hon. Member for Buckingham asked for a wage that was not just satisfactory but much bigger; he has not said that before.
Even the mention of teachers used to cause trouble, but now hon. Members on the Government Benches are beginning to praise teachers. Let us have the praise translated into cash to encourage people into the profession which the Government have belittled for so


long. They know that they must be realistic about the profession now if they are to get more teachers in. We want teachers who are trained, not licensed teachers.

Mr. John Bowis: rose—

Mr. Flannery: Time is getting on, but the hon. Gentleman sat with me on the Select Committee. I agreed with him at least twice, so I shall give way.

Mr. Bowis: Perhaps we can make it a third time. As the son and nephew of a teacher, may I invite the hon. Gentleman to question in his mind whether teachers had their morale raised all that much by the Labour Government who cut their pay in real terms by 12 per cent.?

Mr. Flannery: At that time I was one of the hon. Members who, from those Benches, attacked my Government in a way that none of the Conservative Back Benchers will ever attack this Government. I was struggling for education. No Labour Government ever did to education what this Government are doing to it. Because of their arrogance, they do not even admit it.
I should like to say much more but time is getting on. If the Government want to recruit teachers, they cannot do so without putting a large amount of money into teachers' pockets. They must also give them back their negotiating rights. The Government were condemned by the International Labour Organisation, part of the United Nations, for taking away the negotiating power of teachers. Time will show what will happen if it is all blah that we are told about the recruitment of teachers. I am worried that chaos will result from the Education Reform Act, so-called.

Mr. Tony Baldry: Listening to the hon. Member for Sheffield, Hillsborough (Mr. Flannery) reminded me of a recent speech by the president of the National Union of Teachers, Mrs. June Fisher. I thought that with suitable amendments to her speech one could adapt it to the Opposition. She said:
Teachers should stop moaning and take pride in making a success of the Government's education reforms.
We should ask the Opposition to stop moaning and take a pride in the success of the Government's education reforms, and to brush up their professional image or risk losing the support of parents. The president of the NUT said:
The whingeing teachers are not in the business of caring for children.
I do not think that the Opposition are either, because they constantly live in a world of trying to make a crisis of every situation in education.
I have heard the hon. Member for Hillsborough make exactly the same speech on education every year for the six years that I have been in the House. Every time he makes the same speech about the Government denigrating teachers. If the hon. Gentleman can find for me any quotes where the Secretary of State for Education has denigrated teachers I will give £10 to a charity of his choice for each one. I say that in the knowledge that I will not be a penny worse off because I do not believe that he will find any such quotations. It suits him to maintain that myth.
The only people who can send the teaching profession into a deeper depression are teachers themselves, as my hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham (Mr. Walden) said. As Mrs. Fisher commented:
If somebody goes on long enough about everything being doom and gloom, then that becomes the reality. Teachers have to project a much more positive image.
I entirely agree.
It will do all of us well to get the debate into perspective. Yes, there are difficulties with teacher recruitment—[Interruption.] If the hon. Member for Durham, North-West (Ms. Armstrong) wishes to intervene, I shall gladly give way, rather than have subliminal chatter. There are difficulties but we have to get them into perspective.
The other day The Oxford Times had a headline:
Cash plea as education crisis looms".
I had a meeting of all the secondary teachers in my patch; I asked what teacher shortages there were. They told me that they were short of one half of a physics teacher and one half of a physical education teacher. Because it has become an accepted norm that there is a crisis in teacher recruitment, that is projected by all the newspapers and the media, but it is not real. When there are real difficulties, because the Treasury and everyone else has heard people crying "wolf" for so long, it is an accepted part of the political scene and no one responds in the proper way.
In 1988, 1·5 per cent. of all primary posts and 1 per cent. of all secondary posts were unfilled. That is a problem but it is not the sort of problem that the Opposition have sought to make it out to be. Indeed, the Government have reversed the declining trend in applications to initial teacher training. Between 1987 and 1988 vacant posts in shortage subjects in secondary schools fell significantly; they fell by 33 per cent. in mathematics, by 39 per cent. in craft design and technology and by 48 per cent. in physics. There are regional variations. Obviously it will be more difficult to recruit teachers in inner city areas and in some of the prosperous home counties. That is the same for any occupation or profession. The greatest concern of employers in my constituency is skill shortages and recruitment. It is the same across the board, whether in teaching or in other spheres. That is not unique to teaching.
As opportunities for graduates substantially increase, so too will competition for graduates. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham that we must look at the situation that will confront Britain. With the changing demography, school-leavers and those going to university will become fewer and recruiting sufficient numbers into the teaching profession will obviously become more difficult. Not only must we ensure that good teachers are well paid but we must start to consider the possibility of regional pay differentials for teachers so that those areas that need to recruit teachers more can pay premium rates to do so.
We must also recognise that some 400,000 qualified teachers are not teaching at present. My young son goes to a state school not two miles away from the House. A short while ago a teacher vacancy arose at that school. I happened to be talking to other parents in the school playground and I was staggered by the number of parents with teaching qualifications who would like the opportunity to return to the profession.
It is also a myth to maintain that all inner London schools have difficulty recruiting teachers. When my son's school advertised for a deputy head teacher it had five


good applicants. There are large numbers of qualified teachers who should be able, and should be encouraged, to return to the profession.
That is a matter for local education authorities. It is not good enough for the Opposition to come to debates such as this every time with the two words "more money". If that is all they intend to say we could have a much shorter debate. Local education authorities must use some imagination in exploring the possibilities of job sharing, more part-time work for teachers and maintaining more contact with former teachers.
Teachers often complain that they are worried about returning to the profession because they may be rusty and need to brush up their professional skills. Local education authorities may find it worthwhile to pay teachers an honorarium each year on condition that they attend a one or two-week refresher course each year while they are out of the profession, having children or whatever, so that when they return to teaching they do not feel that they have lost touch with it.
Local authorities could also do more by way of flexible starting salaries and incentive allowances to encourage teachers to take difficult posts. Thanks to the various pay awards made over the past two or three years, an increasing number of incentive allowances are available to local education authorities to reward teachers. There are a host of initiatives for local education authorities to take. I suspect that some boroughs and local education authorities are having difficulty in recruiting teachers because of the image that they have projected for far too long.
The truth is that many inner-city schools in Britain are as good as those elsewhere. For example, many of those in the borough of Lambeth are as good as many of those in Oxfordshire. Many children have reached the same standard. But the image that is constantly projected by boroughs such as Lambeth is not conducive to persuading teachers to go there to teach. If local education authorities had a more positive image of themselves and what can be achieved in their schools, they would probably find people more forthcoming.
It is wrong to pretend that the Government are not responding to the real difficulties that exist. Teachers in surplus subjects are being retrained in shortage subjects. The teaching as a career unit has made enormous strides in attracting individuals to return to the profession. That unit has contacted thousands of people. There is the bursary scheme and the new courses for initial teacher training on shortage subjects. All those are worthwhile initiatives. The Government have come forward with a host of initiatives to tackle the problem.
The Opposition have not made one positive suggestion this evening. As Opposition Front Bench spokesmen go, they are fairly talented, but it is disappointing that they should spend half of a precious Opposition Supply day simply saying that there is a problem. The Government are addressing that problem and it is depressing that the Opposition do not acknowledge that. They do not recognise that, nor join with us in positively promoting teaching and winning people into the profession. Instead, there is constant unnecessary doom and gloom simply to score a few brownie points in the local government elections. Always seeking to make out that the situation in

our schools is worse than it is is unlikely to encourage people into teaching and to give parents confidence in what is happening in our state schools. All that does British education a grave disservice.
The Opposition and some of the teachers' unions are foolish to reject out of hand the concept of licensed teachers. I hope that they noted that when the London borough of Croydon recently had a shortage of science teachers it advertised for untrained science graduates, attracting more than 200 replies, from which it recruited 12 good honours graduates who are now making a considerable contribution to that borough.
The truth of the matter is that on the issue of ensuring that we have sufficient well-paid, well-motivated, good teachers in our schools, as in every other education initiative in Britain, it is the Conservative party, the Government and Conservative Members who are coming forward with the ideas and initiatives and demonstrating a commitment to Britain's state schools. All the Opposition can do is to shout for more money and simply seek to make out that everything is always far worse than it is. It is only by creating such a manic depressive state that they believe they can win any votes in education.

Mr. Win Griffiths: My hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Hillsborough (Mr. Flannery) pointed out that during his speech no Conservative member of the Select Committee which investigated the shortage of teachers was present. Not only were they not present while he was speaking, but not one has been present throughout the debate. Given the expertise that they gathered during the Committee's many sessions, they may have been commanded to stay away in case the facts got in the way of the propaganda that we have been fed this evening. Despite the Government's initiatives, the problem of teacher shortages will be with us for as long as we can see, because those initiatives do not deal with the problem in any significant way.
The background to this debate must be the high quality of the teaching profession. Let me quote from one paragraph of the second report of the interim advisory committee:
As last year the Committee has been impressed by the commitment and dedication of teachers in all types of schools visited. Despite some of the public criticism aimed at teachers over recent years—which, happily, Government spokesmen are now going some way"—
not all the way—
to redress—we found a high degree of professionalism in support of the education of the nation's young people.
Paragraphs 3.39 and 3.19 give more detail on the quality that our teachers provide, despite the difficulties that they face.
In his opening speech, the Secretary of State pointed to a number of his initiatives. We should look at one or two of them at least. He said that this year there would be 2,000 extra places in initial teacher training. Will all those places be filled? Will the majority of them be filled by graduates in those subjects with the greatest shortages? Even with those 2,000 extra places, and even if they were restricted to the subjects with teacher shortages, there would still be insufficient teachers to meet the shortages that will occur in the years ahead.
Only today, members of the Select Committee were provided with a memorandum from the Institute of Physics which says that, using the available figures,


and making varied and realistic assumptions about both the demand for physics in schools and the supply of teachers to meet this demand in the next decade the alarming fact is that in constructing demand-supply graphs we did not find it possible to make the supply and the demand lines cross for any year in the decade.
That means that, throughout the 1990s, according to all the current information available, there will not be a sufficent supply of physics teachers.
The bursary scheme has played a small part in arresting the decline, but not in settling the problem of obtaining the extra teachers needed to match supply and demand. At least 25 per cent. of physics teachers have not entered teaching after completing their bursary period.
The Secretary of State mentioned with pride that an extra 5 per cent. of chemistry teachers were being recruited because of the bursary scheme. He omitted to mention that in 1988 there was a 42 per cent. shortage of chemistry teachers. Therefore, we have hardly begun to tackle the problem. Despite all the Government's initiatives, that remains the fundamental problem: they are nowhere near meeting the extra demands being placed on our schools and teachers by the national curriculum, the Elton report, the need for more INSET because of the need for more teachers in subjects in which teachers are in short supply, and the new forms of teacher training which will make demands on teachers in post and take them out of the classroom. I presume that teachers will receive such training in schools. Many more demands are being made on teachers' time, which means that many teachers will be unable to teach as much as they have in the past.
The Secretary of State was proud to mention the retraining. However, the Committee of Vice-Chancellors and Principals has made it clear that
It is not possible to obtain the needed high-quality specialist teachers of A-level mathematics, physics, chemistry and modern languages by hastily retraining surplus numbers of, for example, biology, home economics and physical education teachers.
I wish to raise a number of points relating to Wales. First, on secondary science, in a survey to which 80 per cent. of schools replied, 46 per cent. of those schools identified the need for extra science staff, and 46 of those schools specified that they would need 53 teachers. Extrapolating that information on a national scale, at a conservative estimate, a further 900 teachers would be needed immediately. I say a conservative estimate, because, in Wales, we are relatively well off compared to many other areas.
In Mid-Glamorgan, only 14 per cent. of pupils in the fourth and fifth years take GCSE Welsh as a second language and 15 per cent. take French. We can imagine the number of extra teachers that will be needed when everyone has to learn those two subjects. In that county, 1,931 teachers were surveyed on the question of teaching Welsh in primary schools. Of those, 362 were fluent Welsh speakers and 161 were Welsh learners, yet 1,144 were teaching Welsh and relying on their ability to read the language and follow basic language courses. A total of 493 were unable to teach Welsh at all, and more than 600 said that they would be prepared to go on beginners' learning courses.
The county council applied for £120,000, with a package of schemes to enable Welsh to be taught throughout the county. The Welsh Office provided £30,000. Lip service that is paid to the extension of the Welsh language is not being implemented, because the

money is not being provided. It is the same throughout the education system. We badly need more money, because without it our education system is doomed to failure.

Mr. Derek Fatchett: We have heard an important admission from the Secretary of State tonight. He made two comments that verified all our assertions that there are teacher shortages: he actually used that phrase, and he also said that there were serious problems in our schools. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Stamford and Spalding (Mr. Davies), in his Trappist role, has decided that he knows more about the subject than the Secretary of State. Perhaps he is not alone in that: it appears that the Minister of State also feels that she knows more about it than her boss. She denies the Secretary of State's admission, which provides verification of our assumptions. When she replies to the debate, the Minister will also be replying to her own contribution at the annual conference of the Secondary Heads Association, which caused so much disquiet not just immediately to SHA but much more generally.
The Secretary of State was good enough to recognise the extent of the current shortages and the mounting evidence to support our assertions: for instance, the report of the interim advisory committee, the substantial work of Her Majesty's inspectorate—pointing yet again to shortages in science, maths, CDT and modern languages and the HMI's important point that those shortages now extend beyond secondary schools into the primary sector, and challenge the ability to teach science as part of the national curriculum in the primary sector.
In a powerful contribution, my right hon. Friend the Member for Bethnal Green and Stepney (Mr. Shore) talked about what the shortages meant for children in his constituency, who, in being denied access to a teacher, were being denied education. There are those absolute shortages, but there are also the hidden, suppressed shortages that are part of schools up and down the land, and part of the nature of our education. Too often, subjects are taught by non-specialist teachers. We know from figures given earlier from the secondary schools staffing survey that the problem has increased between 1984 and 1987. The Secretary of State has called himself Action Man, but some of that period fell during his stewardship, and there was still an increase in non-specialist staff teaching specialist subjects.
Another problem is the shift in curriculum that goes on in too many of our schools because they simply cannot staff themselves with the right sort of teachers for the curriculum that is necessary for the children. It is interesting to note that when, only two weeks ago, we debated the Education (National Curriculum) (Attainment Targets and Programmes of Study in Science) Order 1989, the right hon. Member for Aylesbury (Mr. Raison), to justify 12·5 per cent. rather than 20 per cent. of the curriculum being devoted to science, said that the Government had to cut their cloth according to the acute shortage of teachers in science subjects.
All that is substantial evidence, and leads to a reduction in opportunities for our children and to a reduction of standards. All of those matters have been noticed by virtually everyone with any experience or knowledge of the education system. The only person who has missed out on this truth is the Minister of State. According to the Times


Educational Supplement editorial of 21 April, the Minister of State came up with comforting knowledge for all those schools suffering from teacher shortages. To the Minister of State it was simply a myth. The editorial stated that schools which had difficulty in recruiting good physicists, computing experts or modern linguists could now rest in peace. Their troubles were non-existent—just a myth, according to the Minister of State.
Of course, there were reactions to that statement. I do not know whether this is sanitised in the Department of Education and Science, but its press release at that conference from the Minister of State did not refer at all to the Minister's assertion that teacher shortages were simply a myth. [Interruption.] The Minister of State says that she did not say it. That is interesting, since the whole debate of the Secondary Heads Association centred on the use of her word "myth". The TES reporter also heard the word "myth".
Since she has denied saying this, the Minister of State may want to have a word, for instance, with Mrs. Averil Burgess, who chairs the Girls Schools Association and is headmistress of South Hampstead high school for girls. She was at the conference and heard the Minister of State speak. Although I do not want to do Mrs. Burgess an injustice, I suspect that she is not a subscribed and paid-up member of the Labour party, but she said that to suggest there were no shortages flew in the face of the facts. As reported in yesterday's Times she went on to give evidence to the Minister of State that her school was advertising a religious education post. Mrs. Burgess said that a few years ago such a job would have attracted 10 or more applicants, but at the moment there was only one applicant.
According to the Minister of State, it is a myth to talk about teacher shortages, but according to virtually everyone else with some knowledge of education and of the problems confronting teachers it is not a myth.
The Secretary of State has said that he will bring forward a set of proposals and a series of actions. My right hon. Friend the Member for Bethnal Green and Stepney said that this statement should be quantified by considering the number of additional teachers as a result of these measures. So far, those figures have not been given. Perhaps the Minister of State can give them at a later stage. However, we do know that, in its submission to the Select Committee on Education, Science and Arts, the DES admitted that, in the middle of the 1990s, we will face an acute teacher shortage. The submission states that the teacher shortages will be in maths, physics, technology and modern languages, they will all be deep and they will all affect the ability to teach the national curriculum.
The figures given to the Select Committee were based on an increase of 20 per cent. recruitment into teaching. The Minister of State and the DES know that, in those specialised subjects, the Government has not been able to hit that target. Thus, the information given to the Select Committee was wrong, and will prove even more inaccurate as time goes on. We are facing an acute shortage of teachers and an acute shortage in certain subjects. The problem will grow and make it more difficult to deliver the national curriculum—[Interruption.] I find the chorus from Conservative Members well orchestrated but, as usual, typically empty.
Earlier today, the Secretary of State said that this was a week of national celebration. Some of my hon. Friends and I wondered whether that was because the Secretary of State's rating in the opinion polls had increased from 2 per cent. to 4 per cent., or whether it was because this Government had been in power for 10 years. The crucial point is that the Government have had the stewardship of education in this country for the last 10 years and are responsible for the decline in teacher numbers and for the inability to deliver.

Mr. Nicholas Bennett: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Fatchett: No, I shall not give way.
The Secretary of State referred to the amount of money that he had spent on promoting teaching as a profession. It would have been extremely useful if the Government and Conservative Back Benchers had thought about the damage that they have inflicted on teacher morale and teacher professionalism. During the early life of this Government, all their actions were systemically designed to undermine teacher professionalism. There was an attack on teacher professionalism on every possible occasion at Question Time. The hon. Member for Buckingham (Mr. Walden) got it right tonight when he referred to the stresses and the problems faced by members of the teaching profession. I hope that he will educate a few of his fellow Back Benchers, although I realise that there are difficulties in doing so.
It is typical of the way the Government have treated teachers that at all times they have refused to take teachers into their confidence and to plan with teachers the delivery of the Education Reform Act and the national curriculum. They have adopted at all times a stand-off relationship with teachers. At all times, they have undermined the professionalism of teachers. The facts demonstrate that this country is suffering from a teacher shortage. The facts suggest, moreover, that we are damaging educational opportunities and standards.
In its editorial of 21 April the Times Educational Supplement said:
It is hardly odd in the circumstances that, in their polite way, the secondary heads gave Mrs. Rumbold the bird.
The House is too polite to give the Minister of State the bird. However, on this occasion, as on every other, her response will be inadequate and will not address the problems and challenges that face the country. We want to hear the Minister say that she recognises the problems and will act. We do not want to hear her congratulating herself and pretending that teacher shortages are a myth. The evidence clearly supports the opposite view.

The Minister of State, Department of Education and Science (Mrs. Angela Rumbold): It has been an interesting and, at times, a thoughtful debate. Teacher supply is an important issue to which we must all accord the highest priority. More than that, it is an issue which the Department is handling in the most constructive and vigorous fashion.
We start from the foundation of what teaching is and what it is seen to be—a demanding, creative, professional and rewarding occupation. It is already a popular career option. There can be no doubt about that. The myth that teaching is not attractive is given the lie by the fact that


25,000 people enter or re-enter the teaching profession each year. There is a substantially lower wastage rate in the teaching profession than in any other profession.
I listened with great interest to what the hon. Member for Leeds, Central (Mr. Fatchett) had to say. I waited for his suggestions for meeting teacher shortages. Not a sausage, not an idea came from the hon. Gentleman. He is as barren of ideas on this subject as he is on many subjects. Since he put so much credibility on the Times Educational Supplement, perhaps he read the article this week, which described how a mature man, who had been an engineer and had been made redundant, spent six years training as a maths teacher with computer studies. He has sought work with a local authority which ring fences its applications for jobs. His local authority will not employ him. It has strange ways of employing teachers. He has tried to get employment up and down the country but he has had no success. He has been offered only voluntary work. This is a man trained to teach maths. We have acknowledged shortages in teachers of maths, amongst other subjects, in this country. What do the hon. Gentlemen say about that?
I say thank you to my right hon. and hon. Friends for their contributions. My hon. Friend the Member for Rugby and Kenilworth (Mr. Pawsey) mentioned the report by the Universities Council for the Education of Teachers on the quality of teachers for the future and I was glad of that, because it is important, of course, that it has some encouraging messages. As one might have expected following particularly good recruitment in 1987, the output of university-trained teachers increased over 1987, with an above average increase in the science shortage subjects and maths. Increases have not been at the expense of student quality, which continues to improve, and that is very good news indeed.
I also noted with approbation my hon. Friend's emphasis on the importance of changing what happens in initial teacher training so that the colleges match the training needed by people gaining experience in the classroom as well as outside, besides having good subject qualifications.
My hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham (Mr. Walden) talked of quality, and he will, I am sure, be glad to see the proposals for the initial teacher training for new young entrants which my right hon. Friend has just published. He is right to emphasise the importance of people who not only know their subject but have an ability to transmit that knowledge to children in the classroom. I noted also that he talked of teachers' pay, saying that teachers should be well paid. This is not something which the Government disagree with, especially as teachers over the past three years have had a 40 per cent. increase in pay. He makes a good point also in saying status is important.

Mr. Straw: Will the Minister clear up what she said to the Secondary Heads Association, because I understand that she said she was misreported? The report of her speech quotes her as saying that we really need
to nail this myth that teaching has difficulty in securing recruits and in retaining them when it does secure them.
Was that report accurate? If not, what did she say?

Mrs. Rumbold: I am sorry that the hon. Gentleman did not hear what I said at the beginning. What I said to the Secondary Heads Association was that the myth that teaching is not an attractive option was something that I wanted to nail. That is what I actually said. I cannot help

it if the reporters do not hear me. I cannot help it if the secondary heads heard something else. Sometimes it is impossible to have discussions with people who do not wish to hear the messages one is putting across, and that includes, I have to say, Opposition Members.
I return to what was said by my hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham. He made a very good point on the issue of the status of teachers, because it is important that the image of teachers is improved in the eyes of the parents and the employers, as well as those of the children. I have some sympathy with his views of children who watch too much television. My hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Mr. Baldry) was right to say that my right hon. Friend has admiration for and offers congratulations on the efforts and dedication of the teaching profession. I am sad that the hon. Member for Sheffield, Hillsborough (Mr. Flannery) does not recognise this and complains that Ministers frequently do not congratulate or offer kind words to teachers. Sometimes I fear that it is like having a dialogue with the deaf to tell him what we are saying.
My hon. Friend the Member for Banbury was right to say there has been a reversal in some of the shortage subjects. As I have just said, the Times Educational Supplement last week mentioned a maths teacher who cannot get a job and my hon. Friend mentioned the shortage of teachers at his son's school, saying that when he discussed the matter with other parents many people came forward. I congratulate him on his interesting example of the London borough of Croydon which managed to recruit 12 good honours graduates for teaching science. That emphasises the point we have been making for several months that local education authorities that take trouble and are determined can recruit high-quality teachers who can make good contributions.
The right hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Stepney (Mr. Shore) talked of teacher shortages in Tower Hamlets. I acknowledge that there has been a problem and we are certainly discussing the matter with Tower Hamlets and considering proposals to tackle the problem in April 1990 when in becomes a local education authority. As the right hon. Gentleman pointed out, the local authority has managed to improve the numbers of children not in school from a regrettable 450 to about 250. Of course, I fully acknowledge that the new local education authorities will do everything to improve greatly that situation, which must be tackled properly.
The hon. Member for Southwark and Bermondsey (Mr. Hughes) talked about the new challenges for teachers. He was absolutely correct to say that many teachers face a great deal of new work and new challenges in the classroom and in the management of their schools. But I do not accept the hon. Gentleman's view of the difficulties that that will present to teachers' morale. The GCSE demonstrated that teachers' morale was improved because they felt that together with the pupils, the parents and the employers, the effort that they put in to making that examination a great success was rewarded by the general public's approbation, by the parents' approbation and by the children's view that it was worth working hard at school. The new challenges that will be part of the teaching profession in future will be the teaching of national curriculum subjects, and the management of schools. All those matters will be undertaken in training and in-service training, but, most importantly, in talking to teachers so that they feel that it will be part of a morale-raising operation.

Mr. Simon Hughes: I do not doubt what the Minister of State said. I was arguing not that those challenges are damaging to morale, but that because of those challenges the rewards need to be greater and that because such challenges demand time, effort and activity there must be some compensation or teachers will not feel they can do all that we ask of them.

Mrs. Rumbold: I understand what the hon. Gentleman is saying. No doubt that will be part and parcel of the outcome of the extra effort that is made. However, I have to say to the hon. Gentleman and to the hon. Member for Hillsborough that their objections to licensed teachers are rather sad. I believe that my right hon. Friend's suggestions for licensed teachers will improve the quality of people who enter the classroom at qualified teacher status. Instead of people coming to the classroom and receiving qualified teacher status without any experience, licensed teachers will be graduates or have higher education qualifications and will receive at least two years' training within the classroom. That is extremely important. We currently employ people who are not able to receive such training and who take up posts in schools without any teaching experience.
The opposition to my right hon. Friend's many initiatives to combat teacher shortages is quite incomprehensible. It cannot make sense to highlight areas where there are shortages of specialist teachers but then to rubbish every single idea to help alleviate the problem. The bursary scheme has helped to tackle teacher shortages in special subjects and the teaching as a career team in the Department of Education and Science has had considerable success in its roadshows and its advertising campaign to make sure that people come forward to be new teachers.
Many of the other proposals my right hon. Friend has outlined today prove that our Department is working hard to improve the supply of teachers. I ask the House to support the amendment.

Question put, That the original words stand part of the Question:—

The House divided: Ayes 181, Noes 262.

Division No. 183]
[10 pm.


AYES


Abbott, Ms Diane
Campbell, Menzies (Fife NE)


Anderson, Donald
Campbell-Savours, D. N.


Archer, Rt Hon Peter
Cartwright, John


Armstrong, Hilary
Clarke, Tom (Monklands W)


Ashley, Rt Hon Jack
Clay, Bob


Ashton, Joe
Cohen, Harry


Banks, Tony (Newham NW)
Cook, Robin (Livingston)


Barnes, Harry (Derbyshire NE)
Corbett, Robin


Barnes, Mrs Rosie (Greenwich)
Corbyn, Jeremy


Barron, Kevin
Cousins, Jim


Battle, John
Crowther, Stan


Beckett, Margaret
Cryer, Bob


Beggs, Roy
Cummings, John


Bell, Stuart
Cunliffe, Lawrence


Benn, Rt Hon Tony
Dalyell, Tam


Bermingham, Gerald
Darling, Alistair


Bidwell, Sydney
Davies, Rt Hon Denzil (Llanelli)


Blunkett, David
Davis, Terry (B'ham Hodge H'I)


Boateng, Paul
Dewar, Donald


Bray, Dr Jeremy
Dixon, Don


Brown, Gordon (D'mline E)
Dobson, Frank


Brown, Nicholas (Newcastle E)
Doran, Frank


Brown, Ron (Edinburgh Leith)
Douglas, Dick


Bruce, Malcolm (Gordon)
Dunnachie, Jimmy


Buchan, Norman
Eadie, Alexander


Buckley, George J.
Eastham, Ken


Caborn, Richard
Evans, John (St Helens N)





Ewing, Mrs Margaret (Moray)
Meacher, Michael


Fatchett, Derek
Meale, Alan


Faulds, Andrew
Michie, Bill (Sheffield Heeley)


Fearn, Ronald
Michie, Mrs Ray (Arg'l amp; Bute)


Field, Frank (Birkenhead)
Mitchell, Austin (G't Grimsby)


Fields, Terry (L'pool B G'n)
Morley, Elliott


Fisher, Mark
Morris, Rt Hon A. (W'shawe)


Flannery, Martin
Morris, Rt Hon J. (Aberavon)


Foot, Rt Hon Michael
Mowlam, Marjorie


Foster, Derek
Mullin, Chris


Fraser, John
Murphy, Paul


Fyfe, Maria
Nellist, Dave


Galbraith, Sam
Oakes, Rt Hon Gordon


Galloway, George
O'Neill, Martin


Garrett, John (Norwich South)
Orme, Rt Hon Stanley


Garrett, Ted (Wallsend)
Patchett, Terry


Godman, Dr Norman A.
Pike, Peter L.


Golding, Mrs Llin
Powell, Ray (Ogmore)


Gordon, Mildred
Prescott, John


Gould, Bryan
Primarolo, Dawn


Griffiths, Nigel (Edinburgh S)
Quin, Ms Joyce


Griffiths, Win (Bridgend)
Radice, Giles


Grocott, Bruce
Randall, Stuart


Hardy, Peter
Rees, Rt Hon Merlyn


Harman, Ms Harriet
Richardson, Jo


Hattersley, Rt Hon Roy
Roberts, Allan (Bootle)


Henderson, Doug
Robertson, George


Hinchliffe, David
Robinson, Geoffrey


Hogg, N. (C'nauld amp; Kilsyth)
Rogers, Allan


Holland, Stuart
Ross, Ernie (Dundee W)


Home Robertson, John
Ruddock, Joan


Howarth, George (Knowsley N)
Sedgemore, Brian


Howells, Dr. Kim (Pontypridd)
Sheerman, Barry


Hughes, John (Coventry NE)
Sheldon, Rt Hon Robert


Hughes, Robert (Aberdeen N)
Shore, Rt Hon Peter


Hughes, Sean (Knowsley S)
Short, Clare


Hughes, Simon (Southwark)
Skinner, Dennis


Hume, John
Smith, Andrew (Oxford E)


Ingram, Adam
Smith, Rt Hon J. (Monk'ds E)


Janner, Greville
Soley, Clive


Jones, leuan (Ynys Môn)
Spearing, Nigel


Kinnock, Rt Hon Neil
Steel, Rt Hon David


Kirkwood, Archy
Stott, Roger


Lambie, David
Strang, Gavin


Lamond, James
Straw, Jack


Leighton, Ron
Taylor, Mrs Ann (Dewsbury)


Lestor, Joan (Eccles)
Taylor, Matthew (Truro)


Lewis, Terry
Thompson, Jack (Wansbeck)


Litherland, Robert
Turner, Dennis


Lloyd, Tony (Stretford)
Vaz, Keith


McAllion, John
Wall, Pat


McAvoy, Thomas
Wallace, James


Macdonald, Calum A.
Wardell, Gareth (Gower)


McFall, John
Wareing, Robert N.


McKay, Allen (Barnsley West)
Welsh, Andrew (Angus E)


McKelvey, William
Wigley, Dafydd


McLeish, Henry
Williams, Rt Hon Alan


Maclennan, Robert
Wilson, Brian


McNamara, Kevin
Winnick, David


McWilliam, John
Worthington, Tony


Madden, Max
Wray, Jimmy


Mahon, Mrs Alice



Marek, Dr John
Tellers for the Ayes:


Marshall, Jim (Leicester S)
Mr. Frank Haynes and


Martin, Michael J. (Springburn)
Mr. Martyn Jones.


Martlew, Eric



NOES


Aitken, Jonathan
Baldry, Tony


Alexander, Richard
Banks, Robert (Harrogate)


Allason, Rupert
Batiste, Spencer


Amery, Rt Hon Julian
Beaumont-Dark, Anthony


Amess, David
Bellingham, Henry


Amos, Alan
Bendall, Vivian


Arbuthnot, James
Bennett, Nicholas (Pembroke)


Arnold, Jacques (Gravesham)
Benyon, W.


Ashby, David
Blackburn, Dr John G.


Atkins, Robert
Blaker, Rt Hon Sir Peter


Baker, Rt Hon K. (Mole Valley)
Body, Sir Richard


Baker, Nicholas (Dorset N)
Bonsor, Sir Nicholas






Boscawen, Hon Robert
Griffiths, Peter (Portsmouth N)


Boswell, Tim
Grist, Ian


Bowden, A (Brighton K'pto'n)
Grylls, Michael


Bowden, Gerald (Dulwich)
Gummer, Rt Hon John Selwyn


Bowis, John
Hague, William


Boyson, Rt Hon Dr Sir Rhodes
Hamilton, Hon Archie (Epsom)


Brandon-Bravo, Martin
Hamilton, Neil (Tatton)


Brazier, Julian
Hanley, Jeremy


Bright, Graham
Harris, David


Brown, Michael (Brigg amp; Cl't's)
Haselhurst, Alan


Bruce, Ian (Dorset South)
Hawkins, Christopher


Buchanan-Smith, Rt Hon Alick
Hayward, Robert


Budgen, Nicholas
Hill, James


Burns, Simon
Hind, Kenneth


Burt, Alistair
Howarth, Alan (Strat'd-on-A)


Butler, Chris
Howarth, G. (Cannock amp; B'wd)


Butterfill, John
Howe, Rt Hon Sir Geoffrey


Carlisle, John, (Luton N)
Hunt, David (Wirral W)


Carrington, Matthew
Irvine, Michael


Carttiss, Michael
Irving, Charles


Cash, William
Jack, Michael


Channon, Rt Hon Paul
Janman, Tim


Chapman, Sydney
Jopling, Rt Hon Michael


Chope, Christopher
Kellett-Bowman, Dame Elaine


Clark, Dr Michael (Rochford)
Kirkhope, Timothy


Colvin, Michael
Knapman, Roger


Conway, Derek
Knight, Greg (Derby North)


Coombs, Anthony (Wyre F'rest)
Knight, Dame Jill (Edgbaston)


Coombs, Simon (Swindon)
Knowles, Michael


Cope, Rt Hon John
Knox, David


Cormack, Patrick
Lamont, Rt Hon Norman


Couchman, James
Lang, Ian


Cran, James
Latham, Michael


Currie, Mrs Edwina
Lawrence, Ivan


Curry, David
Lee, John (Pendle)


Davies, Q. (Stamf'd amp; Spald'g)
Lennox-Boyd, Hon Mark


Davis, David (Boothferry)
Lester, Jim (Broxtowe)


Dorrell, Stephen
Lightbown, David


Douglas-Hamilton, Lord James
Lilley, Peter


Dover, Den
Lloyd, Peter (Fareham)


Durant, Tony
Lord, Michael


Dykes, Hugh
Luce, Rt Hon Richard


Eggar, Tim
Lyell, Sir Nicholas


Evennett, David
McCrindle, Robert


Fairbairn, Sir Nicholas
Macfarlane, Sir Neil


Fallon, Michael
MacGregor, Rt Hon John


Favell, Tony
MacKay, Andrew (E Berkshire)


Fenner, Dame Peggy
Maclean, David


Field, Barry (Isle of Wight)
McLoughlin, Patrick


Fishburn, John Dudley
McNair-Wilson, Sir Michael


Fookes, Dame Janet
McNair-Wilson, P. (New Forest)


Forman, Nigel
Major, Rt Hon John


Forsyth, Michael (Stirling)
Malins, Humfrey


Forth, Eric
Mans, Keith


Fowler, Rt Hon Norman
Marlow, Tony


Fox, Sir Marcus
Marshall, John (Hendon S)


Freeman, Roger
Marshall, Michael (Arundel)


French, Douglas
Martin, David (Portsmouth S)


Gale, Roger
Mates, Michael


Gardiner, George
Maude, Hon Francis


Garel-Jones, Tristan
Maxwell-Hyslop, Robin


Gill, Christopher
Mayhew, Rt Hon Sir Patrick


Gilmour, Rt Hon Sir Ian
Mellor, David


Glyn, Dr Alan
Meyer, Sir Anthony


Goodhart, Sir Philip
Miller, Sir Hal


Goodson-Wickes, Dr Charles
Mills, Iain


Gow, Ian
Miscampbell, Norman


Grant, Sir Anthony (CambsSW)
Mitchell, Andrew (Gedling)


Greenway, Harry (Ealing N)
Mitchell, Sir David


Greenway, John (Ryedale)
Moate, Roger


Gregory, Conal
Monro, Sir Hector





Montgomery, Sir Fergus
Stern, Michael


Moore, Rt Hon John
Stevens, Lewis


Morris, M (N'hampton S)
Stewart, Allan (Eastwood)


Morrison, Sir Charles
Stewart, Andy (Sherwood)


Moynihan, Hon Colin
Stokes, Sir John


Neale, Gerrard
Stradling Thomas, Sir John


Nelson, Anthony
Sumberg, David


Neubert, Michael
Summerson, Hugo


Nicholls, Patrick
Taylor, Ian (Esher)


Nicholson, David (Taunton)
Taylor, John M (Solihull)


Onslow, Rt Hon Cranley
Taylor, Teddy (S'end E)


Oppenheim, Phillip
Tebbit, Rt Hon Norman


Paice, James
Temple-Morris, Peter


Patten, John (Oxford W)
Thompson, D. (Calder Valley)


Pawsey, James
Thompson, Patrick (Norwich N)


Peacock, Mrs Elizabeth
Thorne, Neil


Porter, Barry (Wirral S)
Thornton, Malcolm


Porter, David (Waveney)
Thurnham, Peter


Portillo, Michael
Townend, John (Bridlington)


Powell, William (Corby)
Townsend, Cyril D. (B'heath)


Price, Sir David
Tracey, Richard


Raffan, Keith
Trippier, David


Raison, Rt Hon Timothy
Twinn, Dr Ian


Rathbone, Tim
Vaughan, Sir Gerard


Redwood, John
Waddington, Rt Hon David


Renton, Tim
Wakeham, Rt Hon John


Riddick, Graham
Waldegrave, Hon William


Ridsdale, Sir Julian
Walden, George


Roberts, Wyn (Conwy)
Walker, Bill (T'side North)


Rossi, Sir Hugh
Waller, Gary


Rowe, Andrew
Ward, John


Rumbold, Mrs Angela
Wardle, Charles (Bexhill)


Ryder, Richard
Warren, Kenneth


Sackville, Hon Tom
Watts, John


Sayeed, Jonathan
Wells, Bowen


Shaw, David (Dover)
Wheeler, John


Shaw, Sir Michael (Scarb')
Whitney, Ray


Shephard, Mrs G. (Norfolk SW)
Widdecombe, Ann


Shepherd, Richard (Aldridge)
Wiggin, Jerry


Shersby, Michael
Wilshire, David


Sims, Roger
Winterton, Mrs Ann


Skeet, Sir Trevor
Wolfson, Mark


Smith, Tim (Beaconsfield)
Wood, Timothy


Soames, Hon Nicholas
Woodcock, Mike


Speller, Tony
Young, Sir George (Acton)


Spicer, Sir Jim (Dorset W)
Younger, Rt Hon George


Spicer, Michael (S Worcs)



Squire, Robin
Tellers for the Noes:


Stanbrook, Ivor
Mr. Kenneth Carlisle and


Stanley, Rt Hon Sir John
Mr. David Heathcoat-Amory.

Question accordingly negatived.

Question, That the proposed words be there added, put forthwith pursuant to Standing Order No. 30 (Questions on amendments), and agreed to.

Mr. Speaker forthwith declared the main Question, as amended, to be agreed to.

Resolved,
That this House notes the importance of recruiting sufficient well qualified teachers, in particular for the implementation of the national curriculum; welcomes the vigorous measures which the Government has introduced to this end; welcomes the clear indication of the success of these measures; welcomes the measures the Government is taking to make teacher training more rigorous, more practical and more responsive to the needs of schools; and commends the Government's intention to continue to take whatever action is needed to ensure a continuing supply of high quality teachers.

Official Secrets Bill (Allocation of Time)

The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Douglas Hurd): I beg to move,
That the Order of the House [13th February] be supplemented as follows:

Lords Amendments
1. The proceedings on Consideration of the Lords Amendments shall be completed at this day's sitting and, subject to the provisions of the Order of 13th February, those proceedings shall, if not previously brought to a conclusion, be brought to a conclusion not later than the expiration of the period of two hours beginning with the commencement of the proceedings on this Order.
2.—(1) For the purpose of bringing any proceedings to a conclusion in accordance with paragraph 1 above—

(a) Mr. Speaker shall first put forthwith any Question which has already been proposed from the Chair and not yet decided and, if that Question is for the amendment of a Lords Amendment, shall then put forthwith the Question on any further Amendment of the said Lords Amendment moved by a Minister of the Crown and on any Motion moved by a Minister of the Crown, That this House doth agree or disagree with the Lords in the said Lords Amendment or, as the case may be, in the said Lords Amendment as amended;
(b) Mr. Speaker shall then designate such of the remaining Lords Amendments as appear to him to involve questions of Privilege and shall—

(i) put forthwith the Question on any Amendment moved by a Minister of the Crown to a Lords Amendment and then put forthwith the Question on any Motion made by a Minister of the Crown, That this House doth agree or disagree with the Lords in their Amendment, or as the case may be, in their Amendment as amended;
(ii) put forthwith the Question on any Motion made by a Minister of the Crown, That this House doth disagree with the Lords in a Lords Amendment;
(iii) put forthwith with respect to each Amendment designated by Mr. Speaker which has not been disposed of the Question, That this House doth agree with the Lords in their Amendment; and
(iv) put forthwith the Question, That this House doth agree with the Lords in all the remaining Lords Amendments;

(c) as soon as the House has agreed or disagreed with the Lords in any of their Amendments Mr. Speaker shall put forthwith a separate Question on any other Amendment moved by a Minister of the Crown relevant to that Lords Amendment.

(2) Proceedings under sub-paragraph (1) above shall not be interrupted under any Standing Order relating to the sittings of the House.

Stages subsequent to first Consideration of Lords Amendments
3. Mr. Speaker shall put forthwith the Question on any Motion made by a Minister of the Crown for the consideration forthwith of any further Message from the Lords on the Bill.
4. The proceedings on any such further Message from the Lords shall, if not previously brought to a conclusion, be brought to a conclusion one hour after the commencement of those proceedings.
5. For the purpose of bringing those proceedings to a conclusion—

(a) Mr. Speaker shall first put forthwith any Question which has already been proposed from the Chair and not yet decided, and shall then put forthwith the Question on any Motion made by a Minister of the Crown which is related to the Question already proposed from the Chair.

(b) Mr. Speaker shall then designate such of the remaining items in the Lords Message as appear to him to involve questions of Privilege and shall—

(i) put forthwith the Question on any Motion made by a Minister of the Crown on any item;
(ii) in the case of each remaining item designated by Mr. Speaker, put forthwith the Question, That this House doth agree with the Lords in their Proposal; and
(iii) put forthwith the Question, That this House doth agree with the Lords in all the remaining Lords Proposals.

Supplemental
6.—(1) Mr. Speaker shall put forthwith the question on any Motion made by a Minister of the Crown for the appointment and quorum of a Committee to draw up Reasons.
(2) A Committee appointed to draw up Reasons shall report before the conclusion of the sitting at which they are appointed.

7.—(1) In this paragraph "the proceedings" means proceedings on Consideration of Lords Amendments, on any further Message from the Lords on the Bill, on the appointment and quorum of a Committee to draw up Reasons and on the Report of such a Committee.
(2) Paragraph (1) of Standing Order No. 14 (Exempted business) shall apply to the proceedings.
(3) No dilatory Motion with respect to, or in the course of, the proceedings shall be made except by a member of the Government, and the Question on any such Motion shall be put forthwith.
(4) If the proceedings are interrupted at any time by a Motion for the Adjournment of the House under Standing Order No. 20 (Adjournment on specific and important matter that should have urgent consideration), the bringing to a conclusion of any part of the proceedings which, under this Order, are to be brought to a conclusion after that time shall be postponed for a period equal to the duration of the proceedings on that Motion.

The time has come for the House to consider the Lords amendments to the Bill—[interruption.]

Mr. Speaker: Order. Would hon. Members at the Bar either come into the Chamber or leave quietly?

Mr. Hurd: The purpose of the motion before the House is to make the necessary provision for this discussion. There can be nothing unusual or unexpected about it. It is normal, when a timetable has been agreed, to introduce a supplementary motion when the time comes for Lords amendments. Of all the 47 timetable motions since June 1970, so far as I can discover, all of them have been supplemented by further motions.
Obviously, the motion is not an occasion for debate on substance and you, Mr. Speaker, would rapidly pull me up if I launched into one. I doubt, anyway, that in the time available I would manage to dispel all the nightmares in which the critics of the Bill on all sides of the House have preferred to wrap themselves. Only the light of day could do that. When the Bill becomes law and the critics find its operation much closer to my explanations than to their nightmares, they will see the light. I do not expect a glass of champagne from my hon. Friend the Member for Thanet, South (Mr. Aitken); a mere nod of acknowledgement when that day comes will suffice.
It is proper to say one word about timing and to emphasise the point that the House has had plenty of opportunity to discuss the measure. The Government White Paper, which came before the Bill, was debated for five hours last July. We debated the Second Reading of the Bill in just under six hours and then we had 28 hours in Committee, which was on the Floor of the House. It is worth reminding the House that the first debates of that Committee, on 25 January, when we took the special


offence contained in clause 1 of the Bill and notification, and on 2 February when we spent a full day, if I recall correctly, on the question of the public interest defence and the different amendments moved to that effect, took place without any limitation on time. We then had five hours on the remaining stages. In all, the Chamber has heard 39 hours of debate on a Bill that, although of high importance, which is why it was taken on the Floor—and has certainly turned out to be more controversial than I had hoped—nevertheless has just 16 clauses.
The motion allows ample time. All the amendments were passed in another place without a Division. Eight of the 10 amendments were tabled by the Government in response to proposals made or warmly supported by the Opposition spokesmen. The spokesmen declared themselves satisfied that the amendments tabled met the points that they had raised. The other two amendments are technical drafting changes and it was not considered in another place that they raised any issue requiring discussion, let alone Division.
It is reasonable to move forward to consider the amendments. I hope that the House will decide that they deserve to be supported and that the timetable motion allows time for such debates. I invite the House to agree to the motion.

Mr. Robin Corbett: There are times when a Government are right to seek a guillotine on a Bill—usually when opposition has been no more than a filibuster and no points of real substance have been raised. That is not the case with this Bill, either tonight or during its earlier stages. If there has been a filibuster, it has been done by the Government and the only reason for tonight's supplemental gag on debate is that the Government still have no real answers to the points raised from the Opposition and by some of the Government's right hon. and hon. Friends.
It is no exaggeration to say that throughout the Bill the Government have treated the House with contempt. They do so again tonight. There is no need for this guillotine and there was no need for it earlier. It was the Government who, each day, decided how long the House sat, who drew stumps earlier than predicted and who then resorted to this form of gag. Why they have done so again tonight remains a mystery. We were allowed a single, pointless amendment, despite the force of the arguments on public interest defence, prior publication and the need to make more specific the various tests of harm or damage. The other place was generously allowed a whole 10 amendments—maybe two of which were of minor importance, the rest being matters of no more than clarity or drafting.
I have said before and I repeat tonight that there is a consensus among all parties in this House on sensible reform of the Official Secrets Act 1911. The only people to whom that consensus does not apply are the Government. That is why they have taken refuge in the guillotine. Shorn of any sensible argument or defence, they substitute brutal force for debate. No wonder the weekend polls on the 10th anniversary of the Government's election found that a majority in all parties felt that the country had become more authoritarian and more centralised under the Government. That is certainly the case here.
Time was, and yes, even in the early days of this Government, when the Chief Whip or Leader of the House

would go to the Prime Minister to say that amendments should be accepted to respect the strength of feeling and debate. That no longer happens and it is the Government who suffer most from that, not the Opposition, as voters in the Vale of Glamorgan will make clear on Thursday.
Let me just ask the Home Secretary this: what is the need for this guillotine tonight? Against whom is it aimed? What it shows is that the Government are frightened of debate and challenge either from the Labour Benches or from the friendless Benches behind them. The guillotine means that we shall have no chance to debate the future of the D notice committee—just as we had no chance to do so during the Bill's earlier stages. Its future is highly relevant. On 22 February, Rear-Admiral William Higgins, the D notice committee secretary based at the Ministry of Defence, spelt out in an interview in The Independent:
Now they"—
that is editors—
will have to have greater concern for the law".
He added:
Under the new legislation, an editor must know that what he publishes damages national security. If I tell him it isn't damaging, he's got a good defence. If I tell him it is damaging, and he goes ahead and publishes, then that will he a firm platform in the prosecution's evidence.
In other words, that form of self-censorship—that is what the D notice committee represents—now has new and more menacing substance. It puts Rear-Admiral Higgins into the witness box against editors with whom he is trying to run that voluntary system. What does that do to the D notice committee? Mr. Mike Ramsden, editor in chief of Flight International and chairman of the press and broadcasting side of the committee, revealed that when the Government ludicrously sought to ban the BBC radio programme "My Country, Right or Wrong," after Rear-Admiral Higgins had cleared it, the media threatened to withdraw its voluntary support from the committee.
We have unanimously concluded that it would make the D-Notice system unworkable. The proposed legislation is an extension of secrecy, not freedom of information.
Under the guillotine we shall be unable to get answers on that matter. It also means that we shall be unable to discuss a report in today's edition of The Independent that Mr. Desmond Bristow, former chief of counterintelligence in south-east Europe until 1954, plans to do a "Peter Wright" and publish a book from his home in Spain claiming that British intelligence was riddled with traitors. Will the Minister explain, how, under this measure, the Government would deal with that matter, since it contains no powers to prosecute British citizens living abroad, and extradition does not seem be be possible for alleged offences?
It seems that the Government might be about to face another Wright case, wandering around the courts of the world to uphold a lifelong duty of confidentiality and running up large bills to no avail in the process. Yet again, people abroad will be able to know what is being alleged while people in this country will not know. I want the Minister to clarify that, especially as Mr. Bristow is quoted as saying:
The CIA and MI6 were equals before. Now they're not. The CIA does not share its super-secret stuff with us any more. Personally, I don't blame them.
It is almost as though Mr. Bristow has now joined Mr. Peter Wright in being the real author of this measure, the purpose of which is to reassure the Americans that we can


keep secrets, and to save the Government's face. It is as though, perhaps by accident, we have discovered the main purpose of the Bill.
The Government may win—temporarily—here, but those of us who oppose the Bill, because of the way in which the Government have dealt with it, are secure in the knowledge that we shall win in the end. Despite the earlier words of the Home Secretary, I predict that when a jury comes to consider these provisions in relation to a prosecution, it will treat this new measure with the same derision and scorn as earlier juries have treated the Act that it seeks to replace.
I urge all hon. Members who care for the proper traditions of this House to join my hon. Friends and me in the Lobby to protest against this further guillotine.

Mr. Julian Amery: I confess that I have some doubt as to whether the electors in the Vale of Glamorgan will be moved as much perhaps as they should be by the issue that is before the House tonight.

Mr. Dennis Skinner: It is a big issue.

Mr. Amery: I agree, and perhaps it would be better if they were so moved, but it would be foolish to base whatever feelings we may have on this occasion on their presence.
I do not want to burden the House again with renewing the arguments that I adduced when the Bill was in Committee and on Report. I simply recall that I said then that in relation to the publication of memoirs by former members of the secret services, there was an old and time-honoured formula that they would be submitted to authority and censured, if necessary, by the powers responsible.
When I put that forward as an alternative to the lifelong duty of confidentiality, the Minister of State gave me assurances which met all my objections. I regret that those assurances were afterwards withdrawn by the Secretary of State. However, these are administrative decisions and I would like to think that after the debates here and in the other place, when the time comes for administrative actions to be taken, those authorities will be guided by what the Minister of State said in reply to me rather than by the absolute doctrine of lifelong confidentiality to which the Secretary of State returned. I know well that we cannot win a vote tonight and that nothing we can do or that any of my right hon. or hon. Friends on either side can do will change the Government's mind.
I do not like imploring the Executive but I will tonight. There are several books in the pipeline, some of which I know about. When the time comes, I hope that the administrative function will be exercised in the right way. If it is not, some of us, myself included, will make a bit of trouble in each and every case. I do not want to go beyond that. I simply ask my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary and my hon. Friend the Minister to have in mind the feelings that the House and the other place have expressed, and not least the view of Lord Home, whose authority in these matters should carry a good deal of weight. The administrative function should be exercised pragmatically and sensibly and not on any rigid view of lifelong confidentiality or unacceptability. The

Government should let the administrative function be exercised in the good old, reasonable way in which it was before.

Mr. Michael Foot: The right hon Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Mr. Amery) has made a concluding, forlorn appeal to the Government. He knows better than anybody in the House that what future administrators and the courts will take into account is what is written in legislation and not what was said in answer to him or to others in debates. The right hon. Gentleman made a powerful intervention in previous debates. After we had heard his speech and the original response from the Government, most of us thought that that would be reconfirmed. His argument was overwhelming.
When I read some of the debates in the other place and what was said by eminent historians, who were applying their minds to exactly the same problem as the right hon. Gentleman, I thought that the Government could have made some response. But they made none. They used their majority in the other place in the same way as they had used it in this House to vote down any plea such as that made so forcibly by the right hon. Gentleman that originally it was approved by the Home Secretary, only to be modified later. The Home Secretary seems to think that I have misinterpreted what he said. Certainly the right hon. Member for Pavilion thinks that there was a great difference between the Government's first and second response.
The Bill has come back to this place in the last moments before it is to become an Act in a form which takes no account of that whole exchange or of the argument of the right hon. Gentleman about lifetime confidentiality and all that it may imply. It is not for protecting spies but for protecting the proper discussion of what has happened in the past on numerous occasions. I gave an illustration myself. I need only repeat the name. If such a provision had been applied to Winston Churchill, the publication of large sections of what he thought it was necessary and right to publish for the British people would not have been permitted. The right hon. Gentleman nods his head. He had the support of two or three historians in the other place who put that case as well. It is a wretched affair.
That is one aspect. It is not the sole important one, as I am sure the right hon. Member for Pavilion will agree, but it is a most important one, and I am not trying to diminish it. The Government have not moved an inch to meet the whole of that argument. The same thing applies to a range of questions mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Mr. Corbett).
We are not talking solely about tonight's proceedings, but tonight's proceedings are a disgrace to both Houses of Parliament. I am not sure which Chamber bears the most severe guilt. The Government bear the primary guilt in both cases because it is on their recommendation in both Houses that the measure has been put through in this way.
I have seen a number of guillotine motions of my own. If I do not mention them others might be tempted to do so, so I shall take prophylactic action by dealing with that in a second.
There is no need for this squalid little guillotine motion now. We cannot have any lengthy debate. The debate may have been slightly more extensive without the guillotine,


but because the Government think that they can ram the Bill through with a guillotine that is what they do. If we allow this guillotine motion tonight, it will automatically become part of our proceedings. Whenever a Bill which has been subjected to the guillotine procedure returns to the House from the other place the guillotine will automatically be applied again. That is wrong. We could have debated this matter without that, so the guillotine motion is squalid on those accounts.
I happened to come across The Sunday Times at the weekend. Some hon. Members may have read the interview that the noble Lord Whitelaw gave to Mr. Brian Walden, or which Mr. Brian Walden gave to Lord Whitelaw—I am not sure which way round it was. The interview seemed designed to ensure that Lord Whitelaw's memoirs were brightened up. I am not saying anything against Lord Whitelaw. I have the greatest possible affection for him. Brian Walden is a skilful journalist, but the object seemed to be to brighten up the Whitelaw memoirs. I hope that that association will continue in the weeks to come.
I was a little surprised, if not flattered, to read that when Lord Whitelaw was discussing the way in which the Government were proceeding to ram their huge legislative programme through the House of Commons and the other place without any proper respect for the way in which matters should proceed, he said that I was responsible because I had made the guillotine respectable. The Leader of the House nods his head as if he is acting on that basis. He had better not act on that basis in future because it shows a complete misunderstanding of the situation.
It is a very different thing to have a guillotine when the Government have a majority of only one or two, when they will not get any legislation through at all without some form of guillotine at certain stages. Even so, the Labour Government's guillotine motions were much more relaxed than the ones that this Government have imposed. If we had not used the guillotine we would not have carried through any legislation. That is not the Government's situation. The Leader of the House could get a huge amount of legislation through—perhaps not all of it would have been beneficial—without use of the guillotine. Even Lord Whitelaw agrees with that. He thinks that it would have been much better if some of these ridiculous Bills had not been rammed through both Houses.
If only the Leader of the House had thought a bit more carefully he could have satisfied me and Lord Whitelaw at the same time. I should have thought that that was a most estimable aim for any Leader of the House to have. But the right hon. Gentleman forfeited any chance of getting such unanimous support. He has such a love of guillotines now that he will hardly allow any measure to go through the House without applying one. He does not think that the constitutional process is being applied unless a guillotine motion is applied at every stage. I am trying to prevent such a procedure becoming accepted.
But seriously, I believe that the procedures on this Bill are a disgrace to both Houses. We had good debates in this House. Anyone who listened to them all, or most of them, as I did, will know that they were excellent debates. Nobody could doubt that the weight of opinion was against the Government, but not the weight of the votes, of course. Therefore, when the legislation passed to the other place, the House of Lords should have taken that into account. If there is to be a second Chamber to survey what happens in this House, that was the time for it to do

so. If there was to be any attempt by the House of Lords to mitigate what Lord Hailsham calls the elective dictatorship, that was when it should have happened.
However, Lord Hailsham does not seem to have exercised his rights in the other place. He still has the capacity to speak there but he is so intimidated by the elective dictatorship that he did not defend any of these matters. That is a great pity because he might have persuaded some others if he had had the nerve, courage and assiduity to put his case. We might not have been presented with this fait accompli now.
Nobody will take the House of Lords seriously in the future if it cannot exercise any second opinion on a measure such as this. When there is overwhelming opinion in the debates in the House of Commons against the Government's proposals which involve matters of central constitutional problems, and the House of Lords says that it will vote through the legislation, even against most of the weight of the debate in that House, it seems that the Government have an even bigger automatic majority in the second Chamber than here. The Home Secretary shakes his head, but of course the Government have a greater majority there if they summon all the backwoodsmen. If the right hon. Gentleman looks at the figures on the poll tax legislation he will see that that is true. If the Government seek to continue to use their automatic majorities in both Houses against the major tone of the debate, they will do great injury to the constitution of our country.

Mr. Amery: The right hon. Gentleman is in danger of turning our discussion into an argument against the other place. I hope that he will forgive me if I recall that the first time that I met him was at dinner at Lord Beaverbrook's house. When the right hon. Gentleman came in, Lord Beaverbrook said, "Here is Robespierre. Whose head are you going to cut off today?" That brings me back to the subject of the guillotine.
If the right hon. Gentleman looks into the matter, he will see that the argument that he has made is just as true about the other place as it is about this one. The weight of the argument has been consistently, here and there, in favour of what we have been saying. I beg and pray the Ministers to take account of that, and, when they come to take their administrative decisions, to take account of what has been said by the right hon. Gentleman and some Conservative Members.

Mr. Foot: I happily adopt the second part of the right hon. Gentleman's argument because it happens to be the same as my own, but not the first part of it. There is no doubt that in both Houses the weight of the argument has been against the Government's proposition. However, the Government have not taken any account of either House. Therefore, I take the matter slightly further than the right hon. Gentleman and say that that is a condemnation of the other House, as well as this one. We cannot put all the blame on the Government's shoulders, although we can put most of it there.
I do not support the other place. I am in favour of doing away with it, and this is another reason why. When it comes to the crunch, to essential issues, and when Tory Ministers have made up their minds, they always have the obedient House of Lords at their disposal, even on a question on which there is such strong argument against the Executive. In the past few weeks the House of Lords


has missed a great opportunity to carry powerful debates to votes, and when the reckoning comes that will have to be taken into account. The other place is now as subject to the whims and determinations of the Government as is the Cabinet itself.
That, I suppose, is what Lord Hailsham—in his way—was trying to describe as the elective dictatorship. There ought to be some members of the Government who would try to revolt against it; instead, we have this squalid little motion—an attempt to force through late at night, when hon. Members have just returned from a stay in the country, a measure that has been torn apart every time the House has had a chance to debate it. The Government

have brought it back, saying, "We shall ram this through again, and ram it through the other place, and we shall go on until—perhaps—the constitution is bust wide open."
The Government are making a great mistake. If they will not listen to me, they should listen to the right hon. Member for Pavilion or all the other Conservative Members who—I guess—will press the case as strongly as we did in our previous debates. They are making a great mistake even from their own point of view, although I shall not lose any sleep on that account. I shall lose sleep because I believe that they are twisting the constitution to suit the interests of the elective dictatorship.

Several Hon. Members: rose—

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Harold Walker): Order. I remind the House that we must conclude this part of our proceedings by 11.14 pm.

Mr. Rupert Allason: I suppose that as realists we must accept that, whatever is said tonight, bitter experience tells us that the Government will not take the slightest notice. In my wildest moments earlier this evening, I reflected that a debate such as this might just as well be taking place in the saloon bar of a public house; and if I were looking for a name for that public house I would call it the Coach and Horses. I shall explain the reason later.
I did two things this morning when I woke up. First I opened my post, and found a review copy of a book entitled "The Blake Escape: How We Freed George Blake—And Why", by Pat Pottle and Michael Randle. Those two individuals proclaimed to the world last week that they had assisted in the escape of someone who had been sentenced to 42 years' imprisonment. The Bill will not have the slightest impact on that extraordinarily blatant advertisement for their self-confessed illegal activity. They have not been prosecuted, nor have they been given notice that they will be. Surely an Official Secrets Act could at least do that.
Why the "Coach and Horses"? After I had read some of the book I turned to The Independent, where I discovered that Desmond Bristow was preparing to write a book. Desmond Bristow has given long service to this country. If there had been a system under which he could submit his manuscript to the authorities and ensure that no lives would be endangered, he would have done so. The fact remains that the Government have consistently ignored all the pleas from both sides of the House for them to face reality and bring in a sensible system like the one in the United States, perhaps a publications review board. Surely that would be sensible.
The Government's objective in a Bill of this kind must surely be to protect information and to ensure that no information is released that would be dangerous. I am sorry: I believe that I cannot use the word "endanger", but must use "jeopardise". Or is it vice versa? Either way, that is surely the objective. Even while this Bill is being debated, we know that it is an abject failure. We will not achieve that very important objective. To dispose of the Peter Wright red herring once and for all, I point out that that case would not be affected at all by either the Bill or the proposed amendments.
So, who is behind the Home Secretary? Who is behind the Government? Who is proposing these extraordinary changes?

Mr. Jonathan Aitken: It is a secret, but the name begins with "M".

Mr. Allason: I am glad that my hon. Friend is covered by parliamentary privilege, because in other circumstances he might be back in the Old Bailey, of which he has some knowledge. I believe that those behind the measure are the same people who advised the Prime Minister when Anthony Blunt's name was going to be bandied about in the courts in a defamation case. On that occasion, they advised the Prime Minister that Anthony Blunt should be protected and his name not disclosed. Those same people advised the Lord Privy Seal in 1956 that Kim Philby was not under any suspicion. Those same people advised the Prime Minister that there was no evidence of post-war Soviet penetration of the security and intelligence services.
This Bill is surely intended to protect secret information and to ensure that former members of the security and intelligence services follow a particular way of getting clearance to write their books. Of course, such books have been published in the past.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I must remind the hon. Gentleman that we are discussing the allocation of time motion. So far, he has not addressed that motion.

Mr. Allason: I shall be brief. Suffice it to say that the Home Secretary said that he would give permission originally for people to publish. My hon. Friend the Minister of State has subsequently said that only in rare and exceptional circumstances would that situation change.
I believe that the objective of the Bill has been lost. I am very sympathetic to the plea by my right hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Mr. Amery), who has been pressing the point I am making. In future we are likely to see authors prosecuted and journalists going to prison. We have recently seen the spectre in the Salman Rushdie case of books being banned and burnt. We should not put ourselves in such a position. We will certainly be doing so if the Bill goes any further.

Mr. Robert Maclennan: There is some irony in the fact that we are debating the guillotine motion, and that it is only because of that motion that we are able once again to draw attention to the enormity of the Bill. Had the Home Secretary not felt inclined to follow the 47 timetable motions, we should no doubt have had to confine ourselves to the narrow ambit of the amendments from another place that we shall shortly be considering. That would certainly not have been an appropriate way in which to end the debate in this House of a Bill which was a substitute for the freedom of information legislation that this country needs to complete its effective democracy.
The Bill, so long in consideration, has been condemned on all sides. It has been condemned by the leading newspapers of the country and by the vast majority of those who have spoken in the debates in this House and in another place.
The Home Secretary spoke, albeit briefly, on the substance of the Bill. His speech resembled a guttering candle that did nothing to illuminate the debate. It left a somewhat acrid smell. It reminded us that the right hon. Gentleman, who began his term of office as Home Secretary with a somewhat liberal reputation, has systematically, through his legislative activities, destroyed it. In this Bill he has ensured that the law will be an ass. It will be set aside by juries. Public servants, notwithstanding the rubrics of the Bill, will put at the forefront of their mind public interest in the truth and the need to reveal wrongdoing. That is the subject which we wished to ventilate again. The country knows that the Government have stifled that debate. It is that debate which the Home Secretary has so slightingly dispensed with throughout.
Parliament has been made merely a cipher in the proceedings. Time and again hon. Members have been required simply to march through the Lobbies. They have seen the sense in opening up these matters set at naught by


a Government who have been humiliated in the courts and who have then sought a legislative riposte to the defeats that they have suffered.
It would be better if the Bill were not enacted in its present form. Those who have the important task of keeping secret those things that ought to be kept secret will be under tension as to where their duty lies. When public servants smell wrongdoing they will, I have no doubt, reveal it. It will be their duty to do so. In doing so, they will reveal the folly of the Government's actions.
I thank the Home Secretary for providing us with this final opportunity to pass comment on his miserable measure. It is a measure which will do his repute no good in the eyes of those who care about freedom in this country.

Mr. Richard Shepherd: There was a charming moment earlier, if I heard it correctly, when the former leader of the Labour party, the right hon. Member for Blaenau Gwent (Mr. Foot) and the Home Secretary were exchanging reminiscences about the quality of their guillotines. It was a curious moment of sophistry.
I do not go along with the former Leader of the Opposition if he maintains that the Trade Union and Labour Relations Act—TULRA 1 and TULRA 2—are at the heart of our democratic and accountable processes and the rights and liberties of citizens. That is not how I see it. Fortunately, the European Court found otherwise. It found that that is an unacceptable law.
The guillotine is a subject which exercises the minds of thoughtful Conservatives. My right hon. Friend the Leader of the House listed for us the number of guillotines that it has been necessary for the Government to impose to expedite business. The number of measures of great importance that the Government no longer feel that they have the ability to argue is shaming. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State made much of the fact that 28 hours in Committee and 39 hours in total have been devoted to a measure which touches on the fundamental liberty of the citizens of this state.
I have been reading a book by the father of my right hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Mr. Amery). Leo Amery reveals his thoughts on the constitution in his book and makes an observation about British democracy by referring to Burke. He says that our system of parliamentary democracy is not about mere arithmetical majorities. It is not a question of x ÷ 2 + 1. It is a reaching-out process to try to obtain consent and agreement to the great measures that affect our liberty. Why the Government should eschew that on such a fundamental issue I do not understand. This trivial concept that 39 hours is a breathtaking allocation of time is refuted by our own contemporary evidence.
Again, L. S. Abrey in "Thoughts on the Constitution" observed that the Labour Government passed 70 pieces of legislation in the very first parliamentary Session after the war, and most of those were taken on the Floor of the House. Indeed, the Cable and Wireless nationalisation measure had two days on Second Reading, yet this Government feel it necessary to impose a guillotine after 13 hours.
Those of us who have followed the progression of the Bill through the House know why a guillotine was rushed in. The performance of the Minister of State explaining why it was necessary to have powers to designate any person rather than merely Crown servants and Crown contractors and giving, after three hours of debate, the one instance he could think of—the Security Commission, whose members are Privy Councillors and within the circle of secrecy—begs questions as to what the Government was fearful of. Argument was the answer, and it will serve us ill as Conservatives if we have to drive through legislation without being certain and confident of the basis of the argument on which we do it.
The Bill is deeply flawed, and sensitive individuals within the Government know that it is atrocious. As Lord Dacre of Glanton said in another place, it contains principles that this nation rejected by participation in the Nuremberg trials. These are how fundamental the measures are that touch on these very freedoms. That is why it was the right of good Conservatives across the country to expect the House to fulfil one of its principal and primary roles, which is a line-by-line scrutiny of legislation. "Not a bit," say the Government, "We cannot afford this nonsense. After all, we could do away with Parliament altogether. There is nothing in our constitution that insists that we have a First, Second and Third Reading."
We could hand our votes over the Whips Office as soon as we come by power of attorney and go away for four years. I can see my hon. Friends the Whips finding this a most agreeable function. It would simplify government, but it would deny the very concept we want out of this, which is that the Parliament of this country represents the viewpoint of informed, intelligent citizens to ensure those things that we account important, including accountable government. If Government do not have to argue for their contentions, we do not have accountable government. The Government turned their face on those very arguments.
I cannot but support amendments that I wish the Government had introduced or accepted in consultation with the House. The concept of a damage test going from "prejudices" to "endangers" is to be welcomed, and it is something on which the Government could have reached agreement across the country and secured some form of good will for.
I know that my right hon. Friend constantly said that there were important members of my own party who were deeply nervous about this being a dangerously liberal piece of legislation, and he cited my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford (Mr. Tebbit). When I saw my right hon. Friend earlier I thought that he was going to come in to vote down the Government's stern liberalisation of clause 2 and clause 3 in the raising of the damage test, but it is unfortunate that this badly flawed Bill will limp out of here with a great deal of scorn for the worst of reasons. This was something the Government could have argued, accommodated and had a consensus on across the Floor of the House. I hope that in future my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House will recall that for us to reach out and secure consent is the firmest foundation for the rights and authorities of an Executive to lead our country, and that is an important principle which the Government are denying.

Mr. Tam Dalyell: It seemed to me, both from occasional visits and from reading the Lords debate, that those Lords who know most about it on the Conservative side were precisely those who were most critical. Hugh Trevor-Roper is not exactly a Socialist, but he was only one of a number with real knowledge of intelligence matters who have made a study of these things, who was most deeply critical.
I want to ask one question. In his opening speech, the Home Secretary seemed jolly sure that it would work out as he suggested, rather than as the rest of us who have taken an interest believed. He suggested that it would work out far nearer his proposals. If that is the case, how will Parliament monitor the operation of the legislation? We are very bad at monitoring what we have done. I should like to hear—not necessarily tonight—that the Government will at least consider giving us the opportunity, on the basis of a short annual report on the working of their Act, of knowing how it has worked out. If they are so certain, there is no reason why they should not put it to an annual parliamentary test.

Mr. Jonathan Aitken: Although I share the strong sentiments of indignation which have been expressed so ably by my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr. Shepherd), at this late hour I cannot sustain the tone of high moral seriousness which, quite rightly, has run through the speeches of hon. Members from both sides of the House.
The timetable motion reminds me of one of the few examples of judicial wit in an official secrets case. I refer to a very small official secrets case in 1938 involving a journalist in Yorkshire called Driffield who was prosecuted for the heinous crime of collaborating with a GPO telephonist to get stories about police activities for the local paper. He was prosecuted under section 2 of the Official Secrets Act for receiving official information and faced a term of imprisonment. The Attorney-General of the day came up to prosecute him, but the judge in charge of the case did not think much of that and said that the Official Secrets Act was never meant to be used for such a purpose. Towards the end of his summing-up, he leaned across the bench and said, "Mr. Attorney-General, I hope that such a case will never be brought again. If you have to kill a field mouse, it is not always necessary to use a field gun."
I have a vision of the Cabinet Committee discussing the tactics in Parliament on the Lords Amendments saying to each other, "Come on boys, we have to go big-game hunting in Parliament tonight to kill a field mouse. How shall we do it? We had better summon up the heavy artillery, the King's Troop, the big berthas and the howitzers, and put down a long timetable motion." I have had time to count it and it is nearly 750 words long and covers 68 lines on the Order Paper. What is it all about? It is about passing a two-line amendment to delete the word, "jeopardise" and insert the word "endangers"—the very amendment which was suggested on the Floor of the House and totally rejected by the "Three Men in a Boat" team in charge of the Bill's destiny. I cannot imagine what paranoia or insecurity made them think that it was

necessary to wheel up the field guns to kill a field mouse, to blast the enemies of the Bill out of the water once and for all.
The term "field mouse" is pretty appropriate. If I can draw the attention of my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary away from his personal correspondence, being a classical scholar he will remember the words of the poet Horace in "Ars Poetica":
parturiunt montes, nascetur ridiculus mus.
which, if I may translate for the benefit of my fellow Old Etonians, who are mostly among the Opposition, means:
The mountains have been in labour, they have brought forth a ridiculous mouse.
What a ridiculous mouse the Bill has turned out to be.
The hon. Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Mr. Corbett) pointed out that he read in The Independent this morning about a new book being produced by a new overseas author. The whole purpose of the Bill was to give Peter Wright and his successors a jolly good whacking so that they would never do it again, but a Mr. Bristow in Marbella is about to do it all over again. My hon. Friend the Member for Torbay (Mr. Allason), who is always in the forefront of receiving secret information, is receiving through his letter box books about Blake which cannot be stopped, and future novels. Nothing can be done about them. A ridiculous mouse has been born, but it cannot be killed even by the heavy field artillery on the Treasury bench. What a farce we are taking part in.

Mr. Teddy Taylor: It is rather unfortunate that the Government seem to be doing so many disagreeable things late at night. We discuss funny Euro-regulations over which Parliament has no control at this time of night so that nobody knows about them.
I want to put one brief point to the Government. What on earth is the point of bringing forward a guillotine on this matter when we are discussing Lords amendments that are unlikely to provoke any disagreement in the House, but about which we need a considerable amount of information? Amendment No. 4, which involves changing "jeopardises" to "endangers" for international relations, is vital because we know that among international relations, we are talking about Britain's relations with the European Community. The amendment would make an enormous difference. I would like to know a great deal about it, but if we have a guillotine, how do we learn that information?
We also want to know why such a major change is proposed for clauses 2 and 3—and consequently for clause 5—but not for clause 4, which deals with crime and special investigation, especially when we bear in mind the recent activities of the serious fraud squad. I suggest that the reason is that the Government faced huge hostility during earlier debates on the Bill on the principles we discussed and we are dealing tonight with detailed and important amendments.
If our discussions are to be contracted unnecessarily tonight, could we have a clear assurance that the Government will give a full statement—perhaps in written answers—of the consequences of each of the amendments? To people who study them, they seem to be significant. They are not amendments that we seek to oppose, but about which we need to know the consequences. Bearing in mind that voting is unlikely, I hope that the Government will withdraw the motion and let us get on with the job of simply asking questions.

Question put:—

The House divided: Ayes 165, Noes 110.

Division No. 184]
[11.11 pm


AYES


Alexander, Richard
Howarth, G. (Cannock amp; B'wd)


Amess, David
Hunt, David (Wirral W)


Amos, Alan
Hurd, Rt Hon Douglas


Arbuthnot, James
Irvine, Michael


Arnold, Jacques (Gravesham)
Janman, Tim


Ashby, David
Jopling, Rt Hon Michael


Baker, Nicholas (Dorset N)
Kirkhope, Timothy


Baldry, Tony
Knight, Dame Jill (Edgbaston)


Batiste, Spencer
Knowles, Michael


Bendall, Vivian
Knox, David


Bennett, Nicholas (Pembroke)
Latham, Michael


Blaker, Rt Hon Sir Peter
Lawrence, Ivan


Boscawen, Hon Robert
Lightbown, David


Boswell, Tim
Lilley, Peter


Bowden, A (Brighton K'pto'n)
Lloyd, Peter (Fareham)


Bowden, Gerald (Dulwich)
Lord, Michael


Bowis, John
Luce, Rt Hon Richard


Brandon-Bravo, Martin
Lyell, Sir Nicholas


Brazier, Julian
Maclean, David


Bright, Graham
McLoughlin, Patrick


Brown, Michael (Brigg amp; Cl't's)
McNair-Wilson, P. (New Forest)


Burns, Simon
Malins, Humfrey


Burt, Alistair
Mans, Keith


Butterfill, John
Marlow, Tony


Carrington, Matthew
Marshall, John (Hendon S)


Carttiss, Michael
Martin, David (Portsmouth S)


Cash, William
Maude, Hon Francis


Channon, Rt Hon Paul
Maxwell-Hyslop, Robin


Chapman, Sydney
Mayhew, Rt Hon Sir Patrick


Chope, Christopher
Meyer, Sir Anthony


Clark, Dr Michael (Rochford)
Miller, Sir Hal


Conway, Derek
Mills, Iain


Coombs, Anthony (Wyre F'rest)
Moate, Roger


Coombs, Simon (Swindon)
Monro, Sir Hector


Cope, Rt Hon John
Montgomery, Sir Fergus


Cran, James
Morris, M (N'hampton S)


Currie, Mrs Edwina
Moynihan, Hon Colin


Davies, Q. (Stamf'd amp; Spald'g)
Nelson, Anthony


Davis, David (Boothferry)
Neubert, Michael


Dorrell, Stephen
Nicholls, Patrick


Douglas-Hamilton, Lord James
Nicholson, David (Taunton)


Dunn, Bob
Onslow, Rt Hon Cranley


Durant, Tony
Oppenheim, Phillip


Favell, Tony
Paice, James


Fenner, Dame Peggy
Patten, John (Oxford W)


Fishburn, John Dudley
Peacock, Mrs Elizabeth


Forman, Nigel
Porter, David (Waveney)


Forsyth, Michael (Stirling)
Portillo, Michael


Forth, Eric
Powell, William (Corby)


Fowler, Rt Hon Norman
Raffan, Keith


Fox, Sir Marcus
Renton, Tim


Freeman, Roger
Riddick, Graham


French, Douglas
Roberts, Wyn (Conwy)


Gale, Roger
Rowe, Andrew


Garel-Jones, Tristan
Rumbold, Mrs Angela


Gill, Christopher
Ryder, Richard


Glyn, Dr Alan
Sackville, Hon Tom


Goodhart, Sir Philip
Sayeed, Jonathan


Goodson-Wickes, Dr Charles
Shaw, David (Dover)


Gow, Ian
Shaw, Sir Michael (Scarb')


Greenway, John (Ryedale)
Shephard, Mrs G. (Norfolk SW)


Griffiths, Peter (Portsmouth N)
Sims, Roger


Grist, Ian
Smith, Tim (Beaconsfield)


Gummer, Rt Hon John Selwyn
Speller, Tony


Hague, William
Spicer, Sir Jim (Dorset W)


Hamilton, Hon Archie (Epsom)
Spicer, Michael (S Worcs)


Hamilton, Neil (Tatton)
Stevens, Lewis


Haselhurst, Alan
Stradling Thomas, Sir John


Hayward, Robert
Sumberg, David


Heathcoat-Amory, David
Taylor, Ian (Esher)


Hind, Kenneth
Taylor, John M (Solihull)


Howarth, Alan (Strat'd-on-A)
Temple-Morris, Peter





Thompson, D. (Calder Valley)
Ward, John


Thompson, Patrick (Norwich N)
Wardle, Charles (Bexhill)


Thorne, Neil
Watts, John


Thurnham, Peter
Wells, Bowen


Townend, John (Bridlington)
Wheeler, John


Trippier, David
Widdecombe, Ann


Twinn, Dr Ian
Wood, Timothy


Waddington, Rt Hon David
Woodcock, Mike


Wakeham, Rt Hon John



Waldegrave, Hon William
Tellers for the Ayes:


Walden, George
Mr. Kenneth Carlisle and


Walker, Bill (T'side North)
Mr. Michael Fallon.


Waller, Gary



NOES


Abbott, Ms Diane
Hughes, John (Coventry NE)


Aitken, Jonathan
Hughes, Simon (Southwark)


Allason, Rupert
Ingram, Adam


Amery, Rt Hon Julian
Jones, Martyn (Clwyd S W)


Archer, Rt Hon Peter
Kirkwood, Archy


Banks, Tony (Newham NW)
Lamond, James


Barnes, Harry (Derbyshire NE)
Leighton, Ron


Barron, Kevin
Lestor, Joan (Eccles)


Battle, John
Lewis, Terry


Beckett, Margaret
Lloyd, Tony (Stretford)


Beggs, Roy
McAvoy, Thomas


Benyon, W.
McFall, John


Bermingham, Gerald
McKay, Allen (Barnsley West)


Boateng, Paul
Maclennan, Robert


Brown, Gordon (D'mline E)
McWilliam, John


Brown, Nicholas (Newcastle E)
Madden, Max


Buchan, Norman
Mahon, Mrs Alice


Buckley, George J.
Marek, Dr John


Campbell-Savours, D. N.
Marshall, Jim (Leicester S)


Clarke, Tom (Monklands W)
Meacher, Michael


Clay, Bob
Meale, Alan


Cohen, Harry
Michie, Bill (Sheffield Heeley)


Cook, Robin (Livingston)
Mitchell, Austin (G't Grimsby)


Corbett, Robin
Mowlam, Marjorie


Corbyn, Jeremy
Mullin, Chris


Cousins, Jim
Murphy, Paul


Crowther, Stan
Nellist, Dave


Cryer, Bob
Patchett, Terry


Dalyell, Tarn
Pike, Peter L.


Darling, Alistair
Powell, Ray (Ogmore)


Davis, Terry (B'ham Hodge H'I)
Prescott, John


Dewar, Donald
Quin, Ms Joyce


Dixon, Don
Randall, Stuart


Doran, Frank
Robertson, George


Dover, Den
Rogers, Allan


Dunnachie, Jimmy
Rooker, Jeff


Evans, John (St Helens N)
Ross, Ernie (Dundee W)


Fatchett, Derek
Ruddock, Joan


Faulds, Andrew
Shepherd, Richard (Aldridge)


Fields, Terry (L'pool B G'n)
Shore, Rt Hon Peter


Fisher, Mark
Skinner, Dennis


Foot, Rt Hon Michael
Soley, Clive


Foster, Derek
Spearing, Nigel


Fyfe, Maria
Steel, Rt Hon David


Galbraith, Sam
Strang, Gavin


Godman, Dr Norman A.
Taylor, Matthew (Truro)


Golding, Mrs Llin
Taylor, Teddy (S'end E)


Gordon, Mildred
Wall, Pat


Griffiths, Nigel (Edinburgh S)
Wallace, James


Griffiths, Win (Bridgend)
Warden, Gareth (Gower)


Hardy, Peter
Wareing, Robert N.


Harman, Ms Harriet
Winnick, David


Henderson, Doug
Winterton, Mrs Ann


Hinchliffe, David



Home Robertson, John
Tellers for the Noes:


Howarth, George (Knowsley N)
Mr. Frank Haynes and


Howells, Dr. Kim (Pontypridd)
Mr. Ken Eastham.

Question accordingly agreed to.

Ordered,

That the Order of the House [13 February] be supplemented as follows:

Lords Amendments
1. The proceedings on Consideration of the Lords Amendments shall be completed at this day's sitting and,


subject to the provisions of the Order of 13th February, those proceedings shall, if not previously brought to a conclusion, be brought to a conclusion not later than the expiration of the period of two hours beginning with the commencement of the proceedings on this Order.
2.—(1) For the purpose of bringing any proceedings to a conclusion in accordance with paragraph 1 above—

(a) Mr. Speaker shall first put forthwith any Question which has already been proposed from the Chair and not yet decided and, if that Question is for the amendment of a Lords Amendment, shall then put forthwith the Question on any further Amendment of the said Lords Amendment moved by a Minister of the Crown and on any Motion moved by a Minister of the Crown, That this House doth agree or disagree with the Lords in the said Lords Amendment or, as the case may be, in the said Lords Amendment as amended;
(b) Mr. Speaker shall then designate such of the remaining Lords Amendments as appear to him to involve questions of Privilege and shall—

(i) put forthwith the Question on any Amendment moved by a Minister of the Crown to a Lords Amendment and then put forthwith the Question on any Motion made by a Minister of the Crown, That this House doth agree or disagree with the Lords in their Amendment, or as the case may be, in their Amendment as amended;
(ii) put forthwith the Question on any Motion made by a Minister of the Crown, That this House doth disagree with the Lords in a Lords Amendment;
(iii) put forthwith with respect to each Amendment designated by Mr. Speaker which has not been disposed of the Question, That this House doth agree with the Lords in their Amendment; and
(iv) put forthwith the Question, That this House doth agree with the Lords in all the remaining Lords Amendments;

(c) as soon as the House has agreed or disagreed with the Lords in any of their Amendments Mr. Speaker shall put forthwith a separate Question on any other Amendment moved by a Minister of the Crown relevant to that Lords Amendment.

(2) Proceedings under sub-paragraph (1) above shall not be interrupted under any Standing Order relating to the sittings of the House.

Stages subsequent to first Consideration of Lords Amendments
3. Mr. Speaker shall put forthwith the Question on any Motion made by a Minister of the Crown for the consideration forthwith of any further Message from the Lords on the Bill.

4. The proceedings on any such further Message from the Lords shall, if not previously brought to a conclusion, be brought to a conclusion one hour after the commencement of those proceedings.
5. For the purpose of bringing those proceedings to a conclusion—

(a) Mr. Speaker shall first put forthwith any Question which has already been proposed from the Chair and not yet decided, and shall then put forthwith the Question on any Motion made by a Minister of the Crown which is related to the Question already proposed from the Chair.
(b) Mr. Speaker shall then designate such of the remaining items in the Lords Message as appear to him to involve questions of Privilege and shall—

(i) put forthwith the Question on any Motion made by a Minister of the Crown on any item;
(ii) in the case of each remaining item designated by Mr. Speaker, put forthwith the Question, That this House doth agree with the Lords in their Proposal; and
(iii) put forthwith the Question, That this House doth agree with the Lords in all the remaining Lords Proposals.

Supplemental
6.—(1) Mr. Speaker shall put forthwith the question on any Motion made by a Minister of the Crown for the appointment and quorum of a Committee to draw up Reasons.
(2) A Committee appointed to draw up Reasons shall report before the conclusion of the sitting at which it is appointed.
7.—(1) In this paragraph "the proceedings" means proceedings on Consideration of Lords Amendments, on any further Message from the Lords on the Bill, on the appointment and quorum of a Committee to draw up Reasons and on the Report of such a Committee.
(2) Paragraph (1) of Standing Order No. 14 (Exempted business) shall apply to the proceedings.
(3) No dilatory Motion with respect to, or in the course of, the proceedings shall be made except by a member of the Government, and the Question on any such Motion shall be put forthwith.
(4) If the proceedings are interrupted at any time by a Motion for the Adjournment of the House under Standing Order No. 20 (Adjournment on specific and important matter that should have urgent consideration), the bringing to a conclusion of any part of the proceedings which, under this Order, are to be brought to a conclusion after that time shall be postponed for a period equal to the duration of the proceedings on that Motion.

Official Secrets Bill

Lords amendments considered.

Clause 1

SECURITY AND INTELLIGENCE

Lords amendment: No. 1, in page 2, line 18, at end insert—
() Subject to subsection (7) below, a notification for the purposes of subsection (1) above shall be in force for the period of five years beginning with the day on which it is served but may be renewed by further notices under subsection (6) above for periods of five years at a time.

The Minister of State, Home Office (Mr. John Patten): I beg to move, That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said amendment.

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Harold Walker): With this, it will be convenient to consider Lords amendment No. 2.

Mr. Patten: The amendments provide that a notification shall expire after a period of five years from the date on which the notification is served unless it is renewed or previously revoked. The amendments follow closely the substance of amendments tabled by Opposition parties in another place and I note that the Opposition spokesman in another place, Lord Elwyn-Jones, said that he accepted these amendments with pleasure.

Mr. Tam Dalyell: Would this be the right moment to ask the Minister whether he has any sympathy at all, not with a five-year period, but with some kind of annual report back to the House on the actual mechanics of the operation of the Act that he hopes to put through?

Mr. Robin Corbett: If any of the amendments have any substance, which is open to doubt, perhaps it is these two. The Minister and I have had exchanges on this matter. The Bill creates a class of individuals or groups who can be notified that they are subject to the provisions of the Bill. In other words, they will be civil servants in other Government Departments who come into contact with the security and intelligence services or Government contractors. The Home Secretary, who regrettably has had to leave us, said at one stage that there was no intention of designating groups of people. I believe that that was an exercise in semantics. It is obvious that a class of people in a particular office and grade—for example, in the Home Office or the Ministry of Defence—who, by the nature of their work, would have regular contact with the intelligence and security services, would, although not named as a group for notification, make up such a group.
The Minister will remember that it was in paragraph 47 of the White Paper that the notion of the designation of individuals or groups was first postulated, although, as I said, the Home Secretary denied that later. I do not want to make heavy weather of this. We will not know how many people are told that they are notified persons or whether they are told that they are no longer notified persons. No distinction is made in the Bill about the weight or class of the information that those people would have come across in the course of their duties. If they have come across it, that is that.
I welcome the five-year renewal of the notification, but can the Minister assure the House that notification under

the Bill will be kept to the absolute sensible minimum, in line with the Government's ambitions for the Bill? Can he assure us that when it comes to deciding whether notification should be extended for a further five-year period, the power to prolong notification will be used even more sparingly than in the first instance? Clearly, time changes the relevance and importance of the information which perhaps led to the decision to notify in the first place. The Minister would help the House if he could give those assurances.

Mr. John Patten: The hon. Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell) has taken a close interest in the proceedings of the whole of the Bill. Of course, it would be open to him or to any other hon. Member, or a Select Committee, at any stage during the parliamentary cycle to submit the workings of the Official Secrets Act, if such it is at that stage, to examination.
I remember the exchanges between the hon. Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Mr. Corbett) and myself in Committee on the Floor of the House. I do not think that I can add anything to the explanation of the people who may be notified to that which he will find recorded in the Official Report of 25 January 1989 at columns 1128–29. I can certainly give the undertaking that only those people who need to be notified will be notified.

Mr. Dalyell: I appreciate the spirit in which the Minister has said that, but I think that he has forgotten what Back-Bench life is like. I do not know how he can say that it is up to me or anybody else to scrutinise the Bill. Week after week we apply for Adjournment debates, and we may or may not be lucky. I submit that that is not a satisfactory way of dealing with something which should be monitored by Parliament on a regular basis.
The other alternative was that it should be submitted to a Select Committee. Which Select Committee?

Mr. Robert Maclennan: Further to what the hon. Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell) has said, on a number of occasions the Lord President has made it plain that Ministers will not answer questions about security matters in the House. The Minister's statement tonight does not lie nicely with such previous statements.

Mr. John Patten: Both hon. Gentlemen are chasing after the wrong hare. The hon. Member for Linlithgow asked what were the opportunities for keeping the workings of the Act under review. The House provides many opportunities for the workings of Acts to be kept under review.

Mr. Dalyell: Which Select Committee?

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order.

Mr. Dalyell: I am sorry, but I asked a question about which Select Committee.

Mr. Patten: The Defence Select Committee might wish to interest itself in the workings of some parts of the Official Secrets Act because of its interest in defence security. A range of Select Committees look at the workings of different Acts that concern the House.
Question put and agreed to.
Lords amendment No. 2 agreed to.

Clause 2

DEFENCE

Lords amendment: No. 3, in page 2, line 41, leave out "jeopardises" and insert "endangers".

Mr. John Patten: I beg to move, That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said amendment.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: With this it will be convenient to discuss Lords amendment No. 4.

Mr. Patten: The amendments replace the word "jeopardises" in the international relations harm test in clauses 2 and 3 with the word "endangers". The amendments respond to the suggestion in the other place that "endangers" might be clearer to juries than "jeopardises". The Opposition parties in another place fully supported that suggestion and the names of members of those parties appeared on the Order Paper with that of my right hon. and noble Friend the Minister of State in support. That was a welcome touch of unanimity in our consideration of the Bill.

Mr. Teddy Taylor: I am sure that the Minister will accept that the amendments are significant. They strengthen the basis on which we could regard something as damaging. It is interesting that they affect almost every clause in the Bill, except one. That is significant and important.
Clause 2 contains the word jeopardises, which will be affected by the amendments. In clause 3(2) the word jeopardises is replaced by endangers. Clause 5(3) contains the words "the disclosure … is damaging" and, in that connection, damaging is defined closely as something which endangers. Clause 6 relates to international relations and clause 6(4) uses the word "damaging." In all those instances we are replacing the word jeopardises with something which seems more precise and more limiting, namely, damaging.
In relation to clause 6, how on earth is it possible to decide whether a disclosure is damaging to international relations?

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. It would not be in order for the Minister to respond to that question. We are debating the amendments to clauses 2 and 3.

Mr. Taylor: Yes, but a study of the Bill shows that one is referred back to those clauses for a definition of the word damaging as it appears in clause 6(4). That clause says:
damaging shall be determined as it would be in relation to a disclosure of the information, document or article in question by a Crown servant in contravention of section 1(3), 2(1) and 3(1)".
In other words, the clauses are covered by the amendments. In those circumstances it is fair to say that if we accept the amendment it has a specific consequence on clause 6(4). I am not trying to bring in new material. I am simply trying to show that the amendment affects clause 6(4), which refers back to the definition of damaging given earlier in the Bill.
If we accept the amendment, and thereby have a consequential change in relation to the word "damaging" in clause 6(4), how will that affect any consideration of damage in Britain's relations with an international body, and particularly in our relations with the EEC, bearing in mind that Mr. Jacques Delors, the president of the

Commission, has said that before long about four fifths of all legislation affecting the House of Commons will go through the Council of Ministers procedure?
I am not asking a silly question. It is vital that those who are engaged in EEC work should have an idea of the tests that will apply if there is any disclosure. How will it endanger the country's interests as opposed to jeopardising those interests? Do the Government regard this as a significant change? May we be told of the categories of information to which this will apply?
Will the amendment have a bearing on clause 4? Although it appears to affect all the other clauses in the measure, it seems not to concern clause 4. If so, does the Minister consider that to be reasonable? Clause 4 deals with the consequences of what will happen if anybody reveals information which
results in the commission of an offence".
That has wide scope because it relates to any
Crown servant or government contractor
who
discloses … information … to which this section applies and which … results in the commission of an offence".
Am I right in thinking that the amendment will apply to all the other clauses but will not sharpen up the definition in clause 4? I ask that because discussions are taking place now about the controversial issue of the revelation of information in reports of inspectors who have been looking into a company merger. We also have the possibility of an inspection by what is called the serious fraud squad. Bearing in mind the need to protect the community, it would be sad if we sharpened up the definition of disclosure in all the other clauses, but made no change in clause 4.
If the Government are arguing that only issues which endanger the national interest should have this protection, it would be wrong if it were not applied, for example, to reports about the mergers of companies or investigations by the serious fraud squad, where the need to give protection to the general public seems greater than ever.
Those of us who oppose the Bill in principle are grateful that the Government have brought forward this new definition, which will sharpen the position and heighten the test by which it will be decided whether an action endangers the national interest as opposed to jeopardises it. Will this apply to what I would call other minor and consequential disclosures and, if not, why not?
The Minister will accept that civil servants indulge in what I would describe as a "normal amount of disclosure" for a variety of reasons. Some of those might endanger the country, some of those civil servants might be bad people and some might just not be prepared to look on something confidential as confidential or something secret as secret.
Every hon. Member would accept that we must have some law to restrict their activities. On the other hand, when we have a law relating, for example, to companies, where the Government have complete and absolute power to decide whether a document should be published, and when and whether an issue should be referred to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission, and the person affected has no guarantee or protection, is it fair and reasonable that in that one case the Government are making no concession and no commitment? I hope that the Minister can give us some guidance as to why he is going forward with this in regard to international relations, which is a major concession, but is not prepared to make the same concession on clause 4.

Mr. Maclennan: It appears that the amendments are significant, particularly the amendment to clause 3. It will be recalled that in earlier debates we called in question the width of the nature of the documents that were protected from disclosure. By the use of the word "endangers" in preference to "jeopardises" the Government appear to be conceding that the nature of the documents themselves may be also somewhat confined by the use of the word endangers.
It is not conceivable that the interests of the United Kingdom abroad could be endangered by the revelation of, for example, certain minor communications about commercial matters which are the stuff of everyday traffic between Whitehall and Brussels, and in which the hon. Member for Southend, East (Mr. Taylor) takes such an interest. They might be important matters, involving the interests of the nation, but not matters about which it would be appropriate to use the word endangers. I hope that the Minister will confirm that that interpretation of the Government's intention is correct.

Mr. Jonathan Aitken: The amendments should be welcomed, but I wish to probe the Minister briefly on a linguistic point and a political point. As to the linguistic point, I simply seek his confirmation that he believes that the word "endangers" heightens the harm test. That may seem obvious until one goes back into the linguistic roots of language and realises that in older days to be in jeopardy was considered a much higher level of serious trouble than to be in danger. I refer to the example in the King James authorised version of the Bible when Uriah the Hittite was placed in jeopardy by King David sending him into the front line, which was considerably more dangerous than merely being in danger, as various other biblical characters were in less life-threatening situations.
With the passing of the years it is probably true that "jeopardises" has fallen behind and "endangers" has gone ahead. I simply wish confirmation from the Treasury Bench that it is certain that it is using the word in the modern sense and that "endangers" heightens the threshold of proof. That is desirable. I can see a good Queen's counsel in front of a jury managing to get an unfortunate victim or two acquitted by playing on the words and saying, "Members of the jury, can you believe that my client intended to endanger or cast into danger the whole interests of the United Kingdom," whereas many a civil servant might have been able to suggest that the interests of the United Kingdom were jeopardised by a minor leak.
Perhaps more important than the linguistic point is the Minister's attitude to the House of Commons, which he appears to place on an inferior level to the other place. When he made his few words of introduction, he clearly said that the Government have experienced this dramatic conversion on the road to Damascus, swapping the word "jeopardises" for "endangers" because of what was said in the other place.
11.45 pm
It is in the memory of many hon. Members in this debating Chamber tonight that exactly the same points were made on the Floor of the House by many hon. Members. I recall making some of them myself. At that time we met a wall of silence. There was not a single sign of any concession. The Minister might at least have the

grace to say tonight that the Government took into account what was said in the House of Commons, not just what was said in the other place. His words from the Dispatch Box this evening certainly gave the impression that only the arguments in the other place weighed with him.
Finally, I want to penetrate the mystery of the Government's thinking on this matter. Why have they decided to make this concession? On the whole, they have not been convinced by any argument from any source throughout the Bill's proceedings, yet they have suddenly introduced amendment No. 3. Was it a matter of letting one of the good amendments come up on a roulette wheel? Spin the wheel and see which number is lucky. Why this amendment? Why were the Government convinced about something which they rejected out of hand when it was discussed in this House?
In the old days when my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister was a member of the Cabinet one referred to the statutory woman. Now we have the statutory amendment. We have at last got the Government to accept one of the multitude of well-argued and convincing amendments. Why this one? I should like to know.

Mr. John Patten: rose—

Mr. Deputy Speaker: I take it that the Minister has to the leave of the House to speak again.

Mr. Patten: With the leave of the House, Mr. Deputy Speaker. The hon. Member for Caithness and Sutherland (Mr. Maclennan) made an important point about the substance and the meaning of the word "endangers" and its relationship to the Bill. My hon. Friend the Member for Thanet, South (Mr. Aitken) made a linguistic point and then laid down a political challenge. I shall deal with those points before dealing separately with the important points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Southend, East (Mr. Taylor).
As I explained in my brief introduction, the amendments respond to a suggestion that the jury would find it easier to cope with the concept of endangering than with that of jeopardising. I do not regard the amendment as making a substantial change in the effect of the test of harm, other than to make it more readily applicable and understandable by the jury. On balance, the average woman or man in the jury room might find herself or himself easier and happier with the word "endanger" than with the word "jeopardise".

Mr. Aitken: In seeing the amendment as something which does not change the Bill but simply helps the jury, is my hon. Friend hoping for more acquittals or more convictions?

Mr. Patten: The Bill, as my hon. Friend knows, is based on leaving matters to the jury. Ministers must keep their hopes, pious or not, to themselves, and I intend to do so tonight.
My hon. Friend made what was almost a constitutional point, referring to our earlier debate on the guillotine motion. I intended no discourtesy to this place when I referred to the other place. We are dealing with amendments sent to this House from the other place. Therefore, I have to refer to the other place, even though the right hon. Member for Blaenau Gwent (Mr. Foot) wishes it ill and a short life.

Mr. Maclennan: Is the Minister really saying that there is no difference in modern parlance between the use of the word "jeopardise" and the use of "endanger"?

Mr. Patten: I am simply saying what I said a moment or two ago, which will be recorded in Hansard. The jury will find it easier to cope with the concept of endangering than with that of jeopardising. All through the debate we have been talking about the use of words and trying to get the words right in an attempt to improve the Bill.
Tests of harm have been discussed at considerable length in the House and in the other place. Both Houses have agreed that the tests are based on the right principle and are set at the right level. Those issues have been settled and we should not seek to reopen them in this debate.
I turn to the important questions asked directly of me by my hon. Friend the Member for Southend, East. I hope that he will forgive me if I do not become too involved in company investigations and matters European. I certainly will not mention M. Jacques Delors, other than to do so now.
Clause 6(4) contains a damage test that attracts the language of the test in clause 2, in relation to defence, and in clause 3 in relation to international relations. Thereafter, it would be for the jury to decide, as always under the provisions of the Bill, whether the harm test had been met.
My hon. Friend the Member for Southend, East also asked about clause 4, and whether the change involving "endanger" affected clause 4. The answer to that question is no, because clause 4 does not attract the harm test to which the amendments refer.
Understandably, because of his interests, my hon. Friend the Member for Southend, East has made some comments which have gone wider than the terms of the amendments. The points that he raised about clause 4 are completely separate. The Government believe that the provisions in clause 4 are right and do not need amendment.
Question put and agreed to.
Lords amendment No. 4 agreed to.

Clause 8

SAFEGUARDING OF INFORMATION

Lords amendment: No. 5, in page 7, line 47, after "servant" insert "or government contractor"

Mr. John Patten: I beg to move, That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said amendment.
This is a drafting amendment which simply makes it clear that the obligations under clause 8(1), in respect of the handling of documents in his possession are exactly the same for a Government contractor, who has been notified under clause 1(6), as they are for any other Government contractor.

Mr. Teddy Taylor: May I ask the Minister a brief question? He has been very helpful and courteous in his answers. How do police fit in if they are used by Government Departments? We know what a Crown servant is, but would someone who was employed by the

Metropolitan police or the local authority police and used for this purpose, be a Government contractor or a Crown servant? Is the serious drugs squad, which is apparently directly employed by the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry for particular purposes, a Government contractor? The Minister will appreciate that this is an important and serious matter, particularly as the serious fraud squad has the special ability, due to the length of its deliberations, to stop matters coming before the general public. What is its position when it is directly employed by, for example, someone directly employed by a Government Department? Will it be affected?

Mr. Patten: When my hon. Friend used the term "local authority police" early in his remarks, did he mean police employed by local police authorities, rather than by local authorities?

Mr. Teddy Taylor: Yes.

Mr. Patten: The people to whom my hon. Friend referred would be regarded as Crown servants.

Question put and agreed to.

Lords amendment: No. 6, in page 8, line 18, after "any" insert "official"

Mr. John Patten: I beg to move, That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said amendment.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: With this we may take Lords amendments Nos. 7 to 9.

Mr. Patten: The amendments relate to the offence in clause 8(6) of giving unauthorised access to protected information. The amendments are aimed directly to meet the points made in another place; they are intended to apply the offence only to someone who knows that he was disclosing official information, and to clarify the presentation of the offence. I was glad that the Opposition spokesman in another place said that the amendments were acceptable to the Opposition and had his consent and approval.
Question put and agreed to.
Lords amendments Nos. 7 to 9 agreed to.

Schedule 1

CONSEQUENTIAL AMENDMENTS

Lords amendment: No. 10, in page 12, line 11, at end insert—
() Section 30(2)(b) of the Local Government (Scotland) Act 1975;

Mr. John Patten: I beg to move, That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said amendment.
The amendment corrects an omission in schedule 1 and inserts in the schedule a reference to the Local Government (Scotland) Act 1975.

Mr. Dalyell: Why was it omitted? Was the Scottish Office not consulted?

Mr. Patten: It was a mistake for which I take full responsibility.
Question put and agreed to.

Drug Misuse

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. John M. Taylor.]

Sir Fergus Montgomery: I apologise to my hon. Friend the Minister, who has had a very busy time replying to the previous debate and who must now reply to an Adjournment debate starting just before midnight. I should like to say, however, how important I consider this subject. It is a worldwide problem. I think that we are all aware—certainly I am aware—of the Government's efforts in this regard; I am also well aware that there is no single answer to the problem of drugs.
First, there is the problem of drugs coming into this country. All the heroin and cocaine and most of the cannabis comes from abroad: 80 per cent. of the heroin comes from south-west Asia, the cocaine from South America, the herbal cannabis from West Africa and Jamaica and the cannabis resin from the Lebanon and Morocco. The drugs must first be smuggled into the United Kingdom; the drug traffickers then ensure that they get on to the streets.
Obviously, the more readily available the drugs, the more likely people are to experiment with them. That is why it is important to try to stop them coming in, and I believe the increase in international co-operation to be of immense value. Through the United Nations, a conference was held in Vienna in June 1987 which produced more international co-operation to combat all aspects of the problem. Its aims were, first, to stop illicit drug production, and secondly to co-operate to prevent international trafficking.
Three main ways were suggested to prevent the raw material of drugs from being produced. The first was law enforcement—in other words, preventing people from growing illicit crops. The second was crop eradication—in other words wiping out crops that have been grown unlawfully. The third was crop substitution—in other words encouraging the growth of new crops in place of illicit crops. All those methods, however, have proved very difficult. Law enforcement is very expensive in terms of manpower; crop eradication cannot stop farmers replanting at the earliest opportunity; and crop substitution is likely to require a new infrastructure—in other words, it would prove extremely costly.
Perhaps it is best to consider enforcement. This country now has a national drugs intelligence unit, which I believe provides an essential link between the police and Customs and Excise. I pay tribute to the work done by drug squads. We must remember that the illegal drugs business is now the most profitable international business in the world: addiction and smuggling continue to spread, not just in the rich countries but from Peru to India. In several countries, narco syndicates, as they are called, are more powerful than the Governments of those countries. With these enormous drug empires comes a chain of violence and terror.
I do not have to remind my hon. Friend the Minister of what happens in Colombia, which is dominated by the Medellin drug cartel, which may be admired by the poor for its flamboyance but which is feared by all in public life because at least 20 journalists and 50 judges have died for daring to challenge it. I am told by people in the drugs

quads in this country and the United States of America that the Mafia at its worst pales into insignificance beside the Colombian drug syndicates.
Now this country has what is called the advent of the yardies. I will quote the following article from the Daily Telegraph of 13 October 1988:
When Innocent Egbulefu, a Nigerian drug dealer, was thrown from the eighth floor of an east London tower block in March 1986, the investigation into his death received little publicity. During it, however, disturbing rumours emerged of a new and vicious Jamaican gang attempting to gain a foothold in the expanding London cocaine market.
Egbulefu is now recognised as the first of at least six murder victims in Britain of the Yardies, whose American counterparts are seen by the FBI as the most dangerous organised crime group after the Mafia.
His death prompted the Metropolitan Police to form a covert squad to cover intelligence on the Yardies. That the 16-strong squad is now to be almost doubled in strength, at a time of fierce competition for 'limited resources', is a measure of Scotland Yard's alarm at the threat posed by Jamaican organised crime.
The Yardies is a loose association of violent criminals, most of whom originated in Kingston, Jamaica and whose principal interest is the trafficking and sale of cocaine. In Britain, they are perceived as a new phenomenon. In America, however, their counterparts, the 'posses', are said to have been responsible for up to 800 drug-related murders since 1984. The aim of the Yardie squad is to make sure the American experience is not repeated in Britain.
Every person on that Yardie squad must be aware of the dangers involved. As I have said, the illegal drug business is highly profitable. This fact was brought home forcibly to me in 1985 when I went with the Home Affairs Select Committee to visit the United States. In New York, we were taken to the drug dealing area on the lower east side, where we saw the rooftop spotters who were there to ensure that, if the police or law enforcement officers came close, a warning would be given to the people selling drugs.
We saw the disused buildings where the drug dealing was done and the holes in the wall where people passed through their money and got their fix. Much of what we saw was in Washington. Then we went to Miami, which has been referred to as the drug capital of the United States. I do not need to give my hon. Friend lessons in geography, as I understand that that was his subject before he entered Parliament, but I must tell him that Miami is the largest city in Florida, a peninsula with thousands of miles of coastline. As it is impossible to monitor all that coastline, Florida could be called a smugglers' paradise, especially since it is so close to south America and the cocaine centres.
While in Miami, we were taken to a disused factory on an industrial estate, where an enormous amount of cociane had been seized by the authorities. Armed guards were on duty because the value of the cocaine held there was inestimable. We were sworn to secrecy—although it made no difference, since none of us knew his way around Miami—because of the danger to those employed at that centre. If the people who were keen to sell that cocaine had realised where it was being held, I doubt very much that armed guards could have kept them away.
I am told that a few years previously one of the strangest sights in Miami was a queue of men carrying suitcases outside a bank before opening time. Each person carrying a suitcase was accompanied by an armed minder. They were waiting to pay into the bank huge numbers of small denomination bills that had been acquired by drug pushing. Now there are no queues, because the United States has changed the law. The Banks Secrecy Act


requires all cash deposits of over $10,000 to be reported by the bank to the federal authorities. The drug barons in the United States have been forced to launder their profits in tax havens abroad.
What struck me most about that visit to Miami was the way in which the assets of convicted drug barons were used to continue the fight against drugs. It was rather like going to an auctioneer's paradise. We were shown pictures of beautiful homes, racehorses, jewellery, paintings and cars, all of which were the assets of people who had been convicted of drug offences. Their assets were auctioned and sold. The proceeds were then used in the battle against drugs. I happen to believe that that is a good idea. I hope that my hon. Friend will explain why we have not followed the United States example.
A few weeks ago, at Question Time, I asked my hon. Friend what happened to the money that is confiscated as a result of the ill deeds of drug barons. He said that it was taken by the Treasury. Money confiscated from criminals should be put to work in the best possible way for the community. The United States Drug Enforcement Agency has been virtually self-supporting for some years because of the dirty money that it has seized and put to good use. If it is possible to do that in the United States, why cannot it be done here?
I draw to my hon. Friend's attention two recent cases. The first is the case of Charlotte Chrastny. She got seven years for her part in cocaine smuggling. She was ordered to pay £2,600,000 from the profits of her drug operations. The second case is that of Ronnie French. He got eight and a half years, with an extra 10 years without remission unless he hands over £1,700,000, which is regarded as his share of drug profits. Within the last two months, those two cases have resulted in the realisation of £4,300,000. That sum could profitably be used in the fight against drugs instead of going into the Treasury's coffers.
Finally, I draw my hon. Friend's attention to a new development. Last year, the United States Drug Enforcement Agency urged the Metropolitan police to apply for £32·5 million of drug assets that had been seized with the help of the Metropolitan police's special task force that had been investigating the Brinks-Mat bullion robbery. However, the United States authorities ruled against us. They said that there was no mutual assistance agreement with Britain. I think that my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary took prompt action in that case, and agreement has now been reached. The change in the law that was needed has now taken place.
The $64,000 question that I want to ask my hon. Friend is this: does the Treasury get the £32·5 million, or do the police get it? I understand that the United States Drug Enforcement Agency believes that the police should have the money. I support that view.
We all want progress to be made in the fight against drugs. To use the ill-gotten gains of drug barons in the fight against drugs surely makes sense. I hope that my hon. Friend will confirm that when he replies to the debate.

Mr. Tim Rathbone: rose—

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. Does the hon. Member have the leave of the hon. Member for Altrincham and Sale (Sir F. Montgomery) and the Minister to speak in the debate?

Sir Fergus Montgomery: indicated assent.

The Minister of State, Home Office (Mr. John Patten): indicated assent.

Mr. Rathbone: I thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and also my hon. Friend the Member for Altrincham and Sale (Sir F. Montgomery) and the Minister for allowing me to speak for just a few moments.
I rise as the chairman of the all-party drug misuse group to support every word said by my hon. Friend. He drew attention to the marvellous job which the national drugs intelligence unit has been doing, both in encouraging co-operation between police forces, and—all-important—encouraging co-operation between police forces and the Customs. Anything we can do to finance their operation better, to improve the gathering of intelligence, which is imperative in tracking down drug traffickers, ought to be done.
My hon. Friend drew attention to the horrifying activities of the Mafia and the Yardies, and the way this took place in crack houses, which have yet to come to this country—thank goodness, although all the signs are that they are on the way. I know that the Home Affairs Select Committee has studied this question and will return to it again. I should like to endorse what my hon. Friend said about their studies and also what he said about the Government's expenditure, their activities and their attention to this problem, most particularly in terms of the confiscation of drug assets.
I add my own voice and the voice of the all-party drug misuse group to my hon. Friend's plea to the Government to reconsider yet again the application of these funds taken from drug misusers and traffickers in order to use them to the benefit of the hunt for those international criminals and to prevent the tragic social harm they do to everybody in this country and around the world.

The Minister of State, Home Office (Mr. John Patten): I am extremely pleased to be able to respond to my hon. Friend the Member for Altrincham and Sale (Sir F. Montgomery), and also to one or two important points in the short and pointed intervention of my hon. Friend the Member for Lewes (Mr. Rathbone), whom I am very pleased to see in the Chamber tonight.
Of course I recognise the concern which has led my hon. Friend to raise this problem. It is a very serious problem indeed, and I welcome the opportunity to put on record what the Government are doing to tackle it both nationally and internationally, where I believe we have a strong case to claim that we are playing a leading role, certainly within Europe and possibly in other parts of the globe as well.
Drug misuse is a very complex problem, and I suspect that some, like my hon. Friend the Member for Lewes, may know more about some of the complexities than I do, but I think my hon. Friend will agree that there is no single answer to the problem, just as there is no single drug which is misused and abused in this country.
In seeking to combat the problem, a strategy has to be devised which tackles every aspect of it. Our strategy was first formulated in 1984 and is set out in the Home Office document "Tackling Drug Misuse", the third edition of which was published last June. The strategy is comprehensive, and I hope that it is balanced as well. It


seems so to me, and it is as much concerned with reducing demand as it is with trying to stop illicit supplies being imported. Both are very important aspects.
We are taking action simultaneously on five main fronts: first, to reduce supplies from abroad; secondly, to increase the effectiveness of enforcement, to which my hon. Friend referred; thirdly, to maintain effective deterrence and tight domestic controls; fourthly, to develop prevention and education, which is critical; and fifthly, to improve treatment and rehabilitation. No one who has visited treatment and rehabilitation units, as I am sure all hon. Members in the Chamber tonight have done, could fail to be full of admiration for those who work there to try to help those seeking treatment and rehabilitation, or to be moved by the terrible condition to which some have been reduced by their misuse of drugs.
Our strategy is co-ordinated by an interdepartmental ministerial group on the misuse of drugs under the chairmanship of my hon. Friend, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State. That too was established in 1984 and brings together Ministers and officials from all the Departments with an interest in the problem. Brief mention of the machinery of government may not seem very important, but when Ministers at the Home Office, the territorial Ministries, the Department of Health and others have an interest, those interests need to be brought together and interrelated.
I should like to give a brief account of progress in the 10 minutes or so that remain. My hon. Friend questioned me about the Government's attitude to passing on the proceeds of confiscation to the police forces responsible for that confiscation. A high proportion of the drugs that are misused in this country are illegally imported. The Government give the subject of drugs a prominent place in our exchanges with other countries and we are active in the relevant international forums, which include the United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs, of which the United Kingdom has been a member since 1946, the Council of Europe's drug co-operation group—more ordinarily known as the Pompidou group—the European Community, the Customs Co-operation Council and Interpol.
We played a leading role, which was internationally recognised, in drawing up the new United Nations convention against illicit drug trafficking, which was adopted in Vienna last December. It is the first international instrument concerned exclusively with the illicit traffic in drugs. It provides a comprehensive framework for international co-operation in tackling the problem. At the last count, 59 countries, including Britain, had signed the convention subject to ratification. That is not bad since last December.
The Government also contribute substantially to the United Nations for drug abuse control, as I am sure the House would wish. Between 1982 and 1988, we pledged or contributed a total of $16.7 million to the fund, making us the fourth largest donor. Our contributions to the fund's specific projects have included £3·4 million for opium eradication and substitution in Pakistan. Crop substitution is extremely important and costly, as it involves not only money but social change, because in some countries people have cultivated poppies and other

substances for generations. In addition, we have contributed £2·2 million to drug-related development projects in Bolivia.
My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary secured agreement in 1987 to the quadrupling to some £2 million a year of his budget for enforcement and eradicating illicit drug crops in key producing countries. Approximately two thirds of the overall sum is spent through the fund. We are contributing some £1 million over three years to a major law enforcement project by the fund in India, and in the past three years a total of £1·8 million has been provided to Latin American countries, to which my hon. Friend referred, particularly to Colombia, specifically in law-enforcement-related assistance against cocaine traffic. The remaining one third of the budget is spent on bilateral projects directly with other countries. The Caribbean, which alas is one of the principle transit routes for cocaine coming to Britain—I share the fears of my hon. Friend for the future—has been a particular focus for bilateral assistance.
We have a network of customs and police drug liaison officers at strategic posts abroad who work with their counterparts overseas and provide valuable intelligence. Some 15 are now in place doing that difficult and potentially dangerous work. We intend to add more in the not-too-distant future. The intelligence which flows from the work of those customs and police drug liaison officers is enormously valuable in leading to the seizures of drugs in recent years.
On the European front, we regard the Council of Europe group to combat drug abuse and illicit trafficking—the Pompidou group—as the primary forum for developing further co-operation. We have chaired the group since 1984. My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary has convened an extraordinary ministerial meeting of the group in London on 18 and 19 May 1989 to give renewed political impetus to the fight against drugs in Europe. That again shows that my right hon. Friend and the United Kingdom Government are taking the lead in Europe on this important issue.
The agenda for the meeting will focus on three items, which seem to us to be the most urgent at the European level. First, there is the threat posed by cocaine which, all the evidence suggests, is now being targeted increasingly on Europe following the saturation of the North American market to which my hon. Friend referred when he was talking about his visit to Miami. Secondly, there is the confiscation of drug traffickers' assets, which again concerned my hon. Friend; thirdly, there are the important problems posed by AIDS and drug misuse.
I want to speak briefly about resources and to give some answers to my hon. Friend's questions about whether confiscated resources should go to the police forces that have carried out the confiscations. Many resources have been put into fighting the drug problem in this country. We have trebled the number of customs and specialist investigators since 1979. Over £13 million is being made available over four years to develop and introduce technical aids, such as X-ray machines for scanning cargo, and another £7 million has been spent on cutter replacement to improve surveillance of coastal waters.
The strength of the police force drug squads in England is more than 40 per cent. greater than it was at the end of 1983, standing as it does now at about 850 men. That greater commitment of resources is being reflected in real success in enforcement. In 1988, customs seized illicit


drugs with a street value of £185 million. The number of custodial sentences of more than seven years imposed for drug offences rose from 16 in 1980 to 102 in 1987, so we can see that enforcement is beginning to work.
I am aware of the demands that have been made—to which my hon. Friend referred—for drug investigations, especially those with an international dimension, to be recognised in terms of the additional weight they place on police resources. Initially, the concept of funding drugs work through seized assets is appealing. It is the measure of success of an individual force, and that force could say, "We have seized the money and we are now going to spend it on drugs enforcement." However, funding drugs work through seized assets is not very flexible and it might not be fair. Sometimes, seizures of drugs happen almost by chance. Sometimes, a number of consignments come in persistently through the same avenues.
If we relied on funding drugs work through seized assets, we could not rely on a steady income and we could not plan ahead. It makes sense to determine law enforcement resources according to needs and spending priorities, rather than what happens to have been

confiscated in any particular place. The debate began a couple of weeks ago during Home Office questions, when I was able only to give a short answer. My answer has been slightly afforced to my hon. Friend tonight, but I suspect that he may want to return to this point and to argue it in greater detail.
My hon. Friend also referred to the desire of the American drug enforcement authorities to pay the Metropolitan police £32·5 million in reward money. My hon. Friend is right: in the last stages of trying to achieve that, the American Government realised that they did not have the powers within their laws to make such an award. My hon. Friend is also right to say that so much that my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary and my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Under-Secretary, who is ministerially responsible for these matters, are doing is concerned with trying to improve multilateral and bilateral arrangements concerning enforcement and confiscation. We shall pursue that vigorously.
Question put and agreed to.
Adjourned accordingly at twenty-four minutes past Twelve o'clock.